Poet Tasting #2: Gerard Manley Hopkins

“As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring . . .”

When Hopkins entered a religious order in 1868 he destroyed his poetry, but fortunately he continued to send poems to his friend Robert Bridges. When Bridges eventually published the poems in 1918, nearly 30 years after Hopkins’ death, he revealed to the world one of the most startling and innovative poetic voices of the 19^th century.

Hopkins’ poems explore intense emotion and the musicality of language; they are rich in alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia and rhyme, and exhibit Hopkins’ distinctive theories about rhythm and the energy of poetry. Many of his poems delight in the beauty and intricate detail of the natural world and the glorious singularity of birds and insects and human beings. Other poems, discovered after his death, grapple with questions of desolation, doubt and despair.

In this two-week salon, we will, among other brief extracts from Hopkins poetry, consider the particularity of place, person and profession in Duns Scotus’s Oxford and Felix Randal; watch what happens when kingfishers catch fire and dragonflies draw flame; and enter into a ‘dark and comfortless’ Sonnet of Desolation: No worst, there is none…).

“No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?”

JOINING DETAILS:

• Two-meeting study, live on Zoom, led by Tim Swinglehurst
• Thursdays, 14 & 21 January 2027, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK time)
• £80 for 2 two-hour meetings
• Recommended edition: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose, selected and with an Introduction and Notes by W.H. Gardner, Penguin Books, 2008, ISBN-13: 978-0-140-42015-9. Tim will also send out links to the individual poems to be studied.
• This salon will act as a taster for a more in-depth study of Hopkins’ poetry which Sean Forester will offer on Thursday 4, 11, 18 & 25 February, 6.00-8.00pm (UK time).

REDUCED COSTS: we are committed to making our studies as affordable as possible. We have a fund in place to support anyone who would like to register for a study but finds the cost difficult to afford. We can’t promise to help, but please email litsalon@gmail.com in confidence if you would like to request a reduction in the cost of a study.