Manley Hopkins Festival returns to Kildare in July
Hans Palson is one of this year's highlights
THE 37th annual Gerard Manley Hopkins International Festival (GMHIF), will take place in Newbridge College Theatre from the 18– 24 July.
This festival celebrates the writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins whose very strong links with Monasterevin and Clongowes College with his interests in poetry art, music, philosophy and conservation.
The festival is geared to provide artistic and cultural fulfilment for all.
This year international participants will travel from U.S.A, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Finland, Cyprus, and the U.K.
The GMHIF has been described by the Editor of the Oxford Companion to Irish Literature as ‘the best literary festival in Ireland’.
It incorporates a highly regarded literary conference, as well as workshops in creative writing, music, and translation.
There will also be an art exhibition, as well as classical and Irish concerts, international poetry readings, a field trip of cultural interest, and nightly Festival Club.
The festival opening ceremony takes place on 18 July in Newbridge College with a reception at 7pm, which is a free event open to the public, as is the opening of the Art Exhibition.
This will feature Desmond Morris, a surrealist painter of note, but also for presenting Zootime on BBC TV.
However, the Kildare-based writer is best known for the amazing success of his book which sold 20 million copies sold worldwide.
Other featured artists include John Curran, William Finnie, James McKenna, Lena Koster, Brian O’Loughlin, Eleanor Swan, and Kieran Behan.
The exhibition is open to the public and continues for the duration of the festival.
A poetry reading in association with Poetry Ireland with Gabriel Fitzmaurice, Diarmuid Johnson and Desmond Egan will take place on Monday 21 July at 8 pm in the College Theatre, and is again, a free event open to the public.
A classical concert will be performed on Thursday 24 July at 8pm by distinguished Swedish pianist Hans Pålsson who will include Mozart, Schubert and Beethoven.
The full programme is available on our website www.gerardmanleyhopkins.org. A highly successful Youth Programme runs parallel to the main programme under the direction of Derek Egan, and this year more than 30 pre-Leaving Certificate honours students will attend.
Gerard Manley Hopkins is universally acknowledged as one of the great poets of the English language.
Some of his best mature poems, many of them literary masterpieces, were written in Dublin, Clongowes Wood College, Monasterevin, and Rahan, Co Offaly, after he came to Ireland in 1884 to teach classics in University College Dublin.
His associations with Ireland, Dublin and County Kildare are well identified by Hopkins’s biographers, but it was short-lived.
On 8 June 1889, Hopkins contracted typhoid fever and died in Newman House, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin.
He is buried in the Jesuit plot of Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.
Famously, his poetry and writings were unknown until published by Robert Bridges in 1918 when he was finally revealed as one of the most innovative writers in poetic language and rhythm and a powerful and profound poet of religion and nature.
