Hopkins on the rocks

As her voice resonates through the assembly hall of St Paul's secondary school in Monasterevin, the participants in the 10th annual Gerard Manley Hopkins Society Summer School sit silenced by the exotic beauty of the Nigerian gospel singer. Lovelyn Edobor's impromptu performance was just one of several memorable contributions (which included an Irish bard's rendition of an old Gaelic song, a poem in Swedish and English from a Swedish literary editor and poetic morceaux in Irish, English and French from an Irish industrialist) at the Hopkins Society's opening banquet in this small Co Kildare town, known affectionately as the undiscovered Venice of the midlands, at the weekend.

What would Gerard Manley Hopkins have thought of this gathering of almost 150 people from 16 different countries beginning a seven-day celebration of his life and work? "Hopkins wanted to become famous, yet he feared fame at the same time. He only had about eight poems published in his lifetime," says Father Joe Feeney SJ, Professor of English at St Joseph's University, Philadelphia, co-editor of the international academic journal Hopkins Quarterly and one of the Hopkins Summer School's strongest aficionados. On Friday evening Father Feeney gave an electrifying performance of the untitled Hopkins poem known as "Carrion Comfort" in a slot called My Favourite Hopkins Poem, held in the informal setting of the local hotel's festival club. As he recited the rhythmically-challenging lines, "But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me / Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? / scan" the Jesuit priest rocked his right foot, displaying an impressive dramatic vigour.

Other striking readings from Hopkins's work included the sonnet "No worst, there is none", read by the Japanese scholar Takashi Ono, who prefaced his reading with the comment "this is a poem of pure despair which I was moved by from my heart". As the evening turned to night, one began to realise that Hopkins poetry was, indeed, not for the faint of heart.

Mingling with the international Hopkins fraternity, I also began to realise that many of the attendants have come to discover the Hopkins Summer School through contact with the much-travelled Kildare-based poet Desmond Egan. He himself is much celebrated within the summer school, and this year is honoured by the publication of a limited edition of his work together with original lithographs by the Luxembourg-based publisher Francis Van Maele (Edition Phi). Of Hopkins, Egan says, "I came slowly to him. I wasn't a great fan of his poetry at university, but now he is one of my favourites. He is a poet for the more mature years."

Another poem celebrated at this year's summer school is the epic poem, "The Wreck of the Deutschland", written by Hopkins in memory of five Franciscan nuns who drowned at sea in 1875. Members of the Crooked House Theatre group, directed by James McKenna (whose sculpture pieces are - by far - the most interesting of the art exhibited at the summer school) gave two haunting masked performances of this work on a raised platform in the garden of St Paul's with an elliptical backdrop of ruined mill houses, distant canals and passing trains.

The founders of the Hopkins Society admit that the English Jesuit nature poet's links with Monasterevin are somewhat tenuous. Yet this didn't deter the small group of enthusiasts from setting forth 10 years ago to plant the seeds of what is now a well-established event on the calendar of both Hopkins scholars and amateur devotees alike.

"Hopkins celebrated his last Christmas here. He sketched here and he wrote some of his poems here," says Desmond Egan, who is the artistic director of the Hopkins Summer School. In one of his many letters to his close friend, the poet Robert Bridges, Hopkins refers to his stays in Monasterevin at the home of a Miss Cassidy, a friend of the Irish Jesuits.

"She is an elderly lady who by often asking me down to Monasterevin and by the charge and holiday her kind hospitality provides is become one of the props and struts of my existence," he wrote from University College, Dublin, where he spent the last five years of his life as Professor of Classics. Gerard Manley Hopkins is buried at Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.

The Gerard Manley Hopkins Society 10th International Summer School continues until Friday in Monasterevin, Co Kildare. This year's theme, Hopkins and the Environment, will be pursued in lectures throughout the week including Dr Michael Scott, University of Bordeaux, who will talk about "Hopkins and Sky Imagery" on Friday at 10 a.m. Poetry readings at 8 p.m. tonight, tomorrow and Thursday. Tel: 045 525601 for more details.