Wednesday 27 July 2016

Reading at the Monasterevin Gerard Manley Hopkins Society Weekend


I am happy to be reading from my collection in my home county of Kildare this coming Saturday 30th June at the Gerard Manley Hopkins Society Weekend Festival in Monasterevin.

Please come along and bring your friends and family for what sounds like a lovely afternoon of poetry and chat.

Venue: Monasterevin House

By kind permission of the Presentation Sisters.
  3.30 pm Poetry Reading by Richard Halperin
Richard W. Halperin’s most recent volume of poetry is Quiet in a Quiet House.  It concerns people and places of the past.  Nature is interrupted by keening, laughter and rants.  Memory is an important theme and people are presented as souls.
 4.00 pm My Favourite Hopkins Poem
Participants will be invited to read their favourite Hopkins Poem.
 4.30 pm Poetry Reading by Kate Dempsey and Paddy Bushe
Link for the full programme here

Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and a Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame established him among the leading Victorian poets.  His experimental explorations in prosody (especially sprung rhythm) and his use of imagery established him as a daring innovator in a period of largely traditional verse.
Hopkins in Monasterevin
Hopkins moved to Dublin in 1884 and died there in 1889. During this time he was a professor of Greek and Latin at University College Dublin.  In letters to his mother and friend, English Poet Laureate Robert Bridges, he fondly mentions taking 6 or 7 short breaks at Monasterevin House with the Cassidy sisters commencing in 1886.  The Cassidy family were wealthy Catholic whiskey distillers.

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