This project is now complete! All audio files can be found on our catalog page: https://librivox.org/poems-of-gerard-manley-hopkins-version-2-by-gerard-manley-hopkins/
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) was one of the most innovative of English Victorian poets, best known now for his vivid and original imagery of the natural world in verses such as “The Windhover” and “Pied Beauty”.
Hopkins was a master of miniaturisation and condensation. His poetry is characterised by freshness, concentrated originality and often unconventional syntax in which words may have multiple shades of meaning. One of his most important innovations was what he called “sprung rhythm”, a style intended to be read aloud in which — like natural speech — the stressed syllables ‘spring’ between a variable number of unstressed syllables, and in which the poetic lines are defined not by number of syllables but by number of stresses.
At the age of 24 Hopkins converted to Catholicism and began training as a Jesuit priest. For seven years he wrote no poetry at all, believing that he was not called by God to do so. This period ended with a concentrated explosion of originality with “The Wreck of the Deutschland”, his greatest and longest poem (number 4 in this collection) which is dedicated to the memory of five nuns who lost their lives while attempting the sea passage from Germany to England in 1875. Sometimes considered ‘difficult’ by readers who approach it in printed form, the poem’s outlines become clearer when read aloud. It is divided into two sections, an introductory part in which the poet discourses with wonder on the sudden return of his poetic muse after so many fallow years; and a second part in which he describes with dramatic pace the fate of the ship as it hurtles in the storm and snow to its doom on the Kentish sands. At its heart the poem celebrates, in extraordinarily vivid and imaginative terms, the spiritual vision of a nun whose entire attention is absorbed by Christ even as all around her is chaos and terror.
Most of Hopkins’ poetry was unpublished and completely unknown until nearly 30 years after his death when in 1918 Robert Bridges, his old friend and by then Poet Laureate, brought out this book. Hopkins’ originality was soon recognised, and his verse has had a marked influence on many later poets including TS Eliot, Dylan Thomas, WH Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. (Michael Maggs)
- Text source (only read from this text!): https://archive.org/details/poemsofgerardman030114mbp/page/n20/mode/1up and https://www.bartleby.com/122 (poems 73 and 74 only)
- Type of proof-listening required (Note: please read the PL FAQ): Word perfect
IMPORTANT - soloist, please note: in order to limit the amount of languishing projects (and hence the amount of files on our hard-pressed server), we ask that you post an update at least once a month in your project thread, even if you haven't managed to record anything. If we don't hear from you for three months, your project may be opened up to a group project if a Book Coordinator is found. Files you have completed will be used in this project. If you haven't recorded anything yet, your project will be removed from the forum (contact any admin to see if it can be re-instated).
Please don't download or listen to files belonging to projects in process (unless you are the BC or PL). Our servers are not set up to handle the greater volume of traffic. Please wait until the project has been completed. Thanks!
Magic Window:
BC Admin
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Genres for the project: Poetry/Single author
Keywords that describe the book:
Wreck Deutschland
Windhover
Pied Beauty
Kingfishers Fire
Heaven Haven
Hurrahing Harvest
Gods Grandeur
Binsey Poplars
Leaden Echo
Felix Randall
Eurydice
Harry Ploughman
Winefreds Well
Heraclitean Fire - The reader will record the following at the beginning and end of each file:
No more than 0.5 to 1 second of silence at the beginning of the recording!
START of recording (Intro):
"Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit: librivox DOT org. Recording by Michael Maggs. Author's Preface"
END of intro:
“End of Author's Preface"
START of each poem:
"[Poem title] by Gerard Manley Hopkins, read for LibriVox dot org by Michael Maggs"
END of each poem:
“End of poem. This recording is in the public domain”
END of book:
"End of Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins"
There should be ~5 seconds silence at the end of the recording. - Example filename poemsgerardhopkins_##_hopkins_128kb.mp3 (all lower-case) where ## is the section number (e.g. poemsgerardhopkins_01_hopkins_128kb.mp3)
Transfer of files (completed recordings)
Please always post in this forum thread when you've sent a file. Also, post the length of the recording (file duration: mm:ss) together with the link.- Upload your file with the LibriVox Uploader: https://librivox.org/login/uploader
(If you have trouble reading the image above, please message an admin) - You'll need to select the MC, which for this project is: m8b1
- When your upload is complete, you will receive a link - please post it in this thread.
- If this doesn't work, or you have questions, please check our How To Send Your Recording wiki page.
- Upload your file with the LibriVox Uploader: https://librivox.org/login/uploader