Diary of a Stroke
Published on 7. October 2016
Book
Paperback/Softback
190 pages
978-1-84861-509-0 (ISBN)
Description
Diary of a Stroke is a poet's journal with a difference. After suffering a stroke in July 1999, Jeremy Hooker kept a diary of his experience in hospital and of the subsequent period of recuperation at home, which ended with his return to work shortly after January 1, 2000. As in his other published journals, he observed the life around him, with notations of the living moment giving rise to reflection. Closeness to death gave his thinking about questions of ultimate meaning a special urgency. As time passed, he found the diary becoming a memoir of his early years. The past was coming back to him in 'scenes', which were 'quick with sensation and laden with memory'. As a consequence, he was able to write about people dear to him - especially his parents and brothers - who had played a formative part in his life. At the same time as he was learning to walk again, and describing his immediate Somerset environment, he was remembering and vividly describing growing up in rural southern England during and after the Second World War.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Exeter
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
284 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84861-509-0 (9781848615090)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Jeremy Hooker was born in 1941 and grew up in Warsash near Southampton, and the landscape of this region has remained an important source of inspiration. Many of his poems were written in Wales, where he has lived for long periods of his life. His academic career has taken him to universities in England, the Netherlands and the USA and he was Professor of English at the University of Glamorgan until he retired recently. As well as his twelve collections of poetry, including a recent Collected Poems from Enitharmon, Hooker is also well-known as a critic and has published selections of writings by Edward Thomas and Richard Jefferies, and studies on David Jones and John Cowper Powys, all of them important to his own creative life. Other critical titles include Writers in a Landscape and Imagining Wales, whilst Welsh Journal records his life in mid-West Wales during the 1970s. Shearsman Books has previously published two volumes of his journals, and in 2016 publishes his latest poetry collection together with Diary of a Stroke.