Jeremy Hooker

Jeremy Hooker (born 1941, Warsash, Hampshire) is an English poet, critic, teacher, and broadcaster.

Hooker grew up on the edge of the New Forest village of Pennington, about two miles north of Lymington. After studying at the University of Southampton, Hooker lectured at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. First living in Aberystwyth, but then in 1969 moving to the nearby Welsh-speaking parish of Llangwyryfon. Hooker left Llangwyrfron around 1980, when he spent two years as a creative writing fellow at Winchester School of Art.

In 1984 he left the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Subsequently he lived for a while in the Netherlands, teaching at the University of Groningen, before moving to Frome in 1989 and teaching creative writing at the Bath College of Higher Education. This later became Bath Spa University and he was the first director of its MA in Creative Writing. Jeremy Hooker spent the academic year 1994/5 teaching at Le Moine College in upstate New York. More recently he was a Professor at the University of Glamorgan, from where he retired in 2008, becoming Emeritus Professor of the University.

Although retired Hooker remains active, continuing to publish poetry and prose, including contributions to various periodicals.

He has published eleven full length collections of poetry (including selected and collected works), critical studies of John Cowper Powys and David Jones, as well as collections of literary essays. He has also edited works by Richard Jefferies, Edward Thomas, Frances Bellerby, Wilfred Owen. In addition Hooker has been involved with works for radio, including "A Map of David Jones".

When asked, in an interview, about influences Hooker listed Richard Jeffries, Thomas Hardy, Edward Thomas and later David Jones, along with the American Objectivist poets William Carlos Williams and George Oppen. Hooker began reading Jefferies when he was twelve. Another important early influence was the fact that Hooker's father was a landscape painter, who had a great love of Constable.

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