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Jeremy’s feature in the Powys Review XXII (2012) narrates how he shyly brought his poem on JCP, ‘Song of the Ashes’, to the John Cowper Powys Centenary Conference at Cambridge in 1972. The poem addresses John Cowper’s last statement:

‘Old Cheat-the-worms, you chose to go
In fire’s sensation, body’s final fling,’

On the second morning of the conference Gerard Casey informed him: ‘I was moved by ‘Song of the Ashes’. I scattered the ashes on Chesil Beach.’ In the same feature Hooker explains the importance of John Cowper for him as a ‘partial liberation from fearful self-consciousness, and a confidence in my own elementalism.’ His first encounter with the Powys brothers was in the 1960s when he read Llewelyn. ‘In his letters and essays—to my mind always the best of Llewelyn—and through contact with the Dorset earth, I found a kind of ‘grounding’, which placed me back in my body, and in contact with the world.’ As a tribute to Llewelyn, he named his son, born in 1972, Joseph Llewelyn.
In the same feature he writes of his debt to the Powyses for ‘their contact with the earth of the south’ and their ‘celebratory enlargement of being’ which he embodied in his poetry from the collection Soliloquies of a Chalk Giant (1974) onwards. The title suggests an acknowledgement to TF’s Soliloquies of a Hermit, whom he would write about in his essay ‘TF Powys: the Bass Note’ in The Powys Review 4 (1977). In the essay he contradicts the normally dour image of TF and presents him as an affirmative visionary author who learned ‘how to reconcile the goodness of Creation with the existence of evil; learning how to bless.’ Hooker’s writings repay visiting for his perceptions of the similarities and differences between the brothers. In a single sentence he illuminates TF Powys’s writing: ‘In Powys’s fiction all creatures, and the things he animates, devise a metaphysical system according to their natures and circumscribed by their limitations.’
Jeremy’s comparative study of JC Powys and David Jones emphasises the importance of JCP’s Welsh identity. While we have many studies of the three brothers, the second-generation of Gerard and Mary Casey have been largely neglected. Jeremy took up their cause with a sensitive and enlightening talk to the Powys Society annual conference in Llangollen in 2011. In a review of the collection, The Poetry of Place, in The Powys Review 16 (1985), Peter Lewis depicts Jeremy Hooker’s underlying ideology as ‘anti-materialistic, anti-utilitarian, anti-pragmatic, pro-visionary, pro-imaginative … a toughened, modernized, far from naive version of conservative romanticism.’ Epithets that could equally apply to the Powys family. He made many contributions to the Powys literature with reviews, essays and letters in the Powys Review, Powys Journal and Powys Society Newsletter. These can be located by using the ‘search’ function on this website. A Powysian bibliography will be included in Newsletter 117, March 2026. The above publications also include reviews of Jeremy’s poetry, essays, memoirs and journals as they appeared. One review stands out in The Powys Journal XXVIII (2018) where Charles Lock responds to four recent books by Jeremy.
Jeremy has joined his wife, Mielke, who died earlier last year, but he lives on through his well-crafted poetry and penetrating prose.

Patrick Quigley

From: Joe Hooker hooker.joe@gmail.com

Jerry’s funeral will be held at Llwydcoed Crematorium (the same location as his late beloved wife, Mieke) on Friday, the 30th of January at 1:00 pm. The Christian ceremony will be conducted by his priest, Father Rajiv Sidhu, who had been giving him communion toward the end of his life. Jerry very much enjoyed these visits and chats.

After the ceremony, we would like to invite you to the function room of Caffi Soar in Merthyr for an informal wake. We hope to remember him through conversation, music, and perhaps a poem or two. We warmly invite anyone who wishes to speak for a few minutes to do so; think of it as a wake/open mic. We felt it was fitting to do it this way, as so many of you knew him so well both personally and through his writing. There is absolutely no pressure, but the floor is yours if you feel moved to share.

We understand that South Wales is a long way to travel and not everyone will be able to attend. The service will be live-streamed, and a link will be made available closer to the date.

We have decided to provide flowers for the ceremony ourselves and kindly ask that you do not bring flowers. Instead, please consider donating what you would have spent to one of Jerry’s favorite charities, which included RNLI, RSPB, and Shelter Cymru.

To help us with arrangements, it would be very useful to know how many people to expect. If you could RSVP Joe Hooker hooker.joe@gmail.com at your earliest convenience, it would be very much appreciated.

The dress code will be smart-casual or formal.