(Complete) The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - m8b1

Solo or group recordings that are finished and fully available for listeners
MichaelMaggs
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Post by MichaelMaggs »

Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889).

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Most of Hopkins’ poetry was unpublished and completely unknown until nearly 30 years after his death when in 1918 Robert Bridges, his old friend and by then Poet Laureate, brought out this book.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).
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    Magic Window:



    BC Admin
    ============================================

    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)

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Last edited by MichaelMaggs on June 18th, 2020, 4:18 am, edited 15 times in total.
MichaelMaggs
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Post by MichaelMaggs »

Time for a challenge! This has been recorded once before, but in a very different way to my reading style. Variety is good, I think?

I intend to go through the collection fairly slowly, as I'll need time to review and make sure I understand each poem before recording it.

I'm proposing to read all the poems and fragments, plus the author's preface, but not to include the editor's preface or the notes. Will group some of the smaller poems together as I go on, if that's OK.
KevinS
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Post by KevinS »

I'm not sure if LivriVox accepts Bartleby texts. If not, here is an alternative I think that all will find acceptable: https://archive.org/details/poemsofgerardman030114mbp/page/n5

Once you get started, please check with me if you'd like me to serve as DPL.
MichaelMaggs
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Post by MichaelMaggs »

Thanks for the offer, Kevin. I'd be happy to have you as DPL. I'm hoping that Bartleby will be OK as it's a lot easier to read than the Gutenberg fascimile (which has ink annotations all over it). Unless the rules have changed since 2007 it should be, as that's the source that was used for the first recording: https://librivox.org/poems-of-gerard-manley-hopkins.
KevinS
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Post by KevinS »

MichaelMaggs wrote: November 13th, 2019, 11:27 am Thanks for the offer, Kevin. I'd be happy to have you as DPL. I'm hoping that Bartleby will be OK as it's a lot easier to read than the Gutenberg fascimile (which has ink annotations all over it). Unless the rules have changed since 2007 it should be, as that's the source that was used for the first recording: https://librivox.org/poems-of-gerard-manley-hopkins.
Sign me up. Hopkins is one of my favorites.
MichaelMaggs
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Post by MichaelMaggs »

Is there anything else I need to do at this point, or is it just a case of waiting for a friendly volunteer come along and set up the MW?
KevinS
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Post by KevinS »

MichaelMaggs wrote: November 15th, 2019, 12:17 pm Is there anything else I need to do at this point, or is it just a case of waiting for a friendly volunteer come along and set up the MW?
It takes some time occasionally. The folks who are available to MC are balancing many projects and some have set personal strict limits to what load they can take on. As projects get completed, the MCs will appear.
m8b1
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Post by m8b1 »

I'll MC for you. The MW is all set!

I shortened the file name a bit, and changed "chapter" to "section" for the intro/outro.

I'll go ahead and move us to Going Solo!
Maria
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Readers Wanted:

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Catholic Audiobooks
MichaelMaggs
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Post by MichaelMaggs »

Fantastic! Thank you so much.
MichaelMaggs
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Post by MichaelMaggs »

Hi Maria

I've decided that rather than group the poems I'd prefer to record them separately, even though some are quite short. Looking at what other poetry readers have done, I think I should adjust the standard wording slightly. Would this be OK, do you think?

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.org by Michael Maggs."

END of each poem:


“End of poem. This poem is in the public domain.”

END of book:


"End of Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins"
Last edited by MichaelMaggs on May 10th, 2020, 2:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
m8b1
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Post by m8b1 »

Hi Michael,

I was going to suggest using the poetry disclaimer if you were going to record them all separately, but since you were originally going to group them, I didn't bring it up. :-)

This is the disclaimer we use for poetry, which should make it even shorter than what you proposed:
"[Poem title], by [author], read for LibriVox dot org by [your name]" or some variation on that, adding (if you wish) date, location, your personal URL, etc.
• Then read the poem.
• At the end, say: "End of poem. This recording is in the public domain."
I would of course use the longer one for the first section, as you already stated.

If people have used the shortened disclaimer you posted, I am fine with it - whatever you choose!
Maria
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Readers Wanted:

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Catholic Audiobooks
KevinS
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Post by KevinS »

Michael, I see now that you are asking for a 'standard' PL. Should you want to change that to 'word perfect,' I won't mind. Whatever you are comfortable with.
MichaelMaggs
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Post by MichaelMaggs »

Maria: Many thanks. I've updated the first post with your suggested 'poetry' disclaimers.

Kevin: I'll definitely be aiming at a word perfect recording, as the exact words are probably more important with Hopkins than with almost any other poet. It will be more work for you but thanks, let's do it!
MichaelMaggs
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Post by MichaelMaggs »

Ok, Author's preface now ready for PL.
KevinS
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Post by KevinS »

MichaelMaggs wrote: November 25th, 2019, 12:10 pm Ok, Author's preface now ready for PL.
I remember this at university. I remember saying to myself, "One day I might understand all this."

PL OK!
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