Lunchtime Learning - Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins is one of the greatest Victorian poets, who died young at the age of 44. Born and brought up an Anglican (his father was for a time churchwarden of St John’s, Hampstead, but while he was a student at Oxford, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church by St John Henry Newman. Soon after leaving Oxford, he entered the Jesuits and was eventually ordained.

His poetry shows both a deep and profound appreciation of God’s creation and an often-agonised reflection on his own periods of doubt and depression, probably related to internal struggles over his faith and sexuality. He also developed a unique style that pushed the boundaries of then accepted poetic conventions, and helped pave the way for later free verse to develop. Although most of his poetry was unpublished in his lifetime, in the twentieth century he increasingly became appreciated as one of the greatest English poets.

His poems reflect a deep faith both in joy and despair, expressed in a language that plays with sound in ways that make it impossible to read him silently. Many of his poems are often read as prayers, especially God’s Grandeur and Pied Beauty, which chime with many of today’s concerns about creation.

Wyn Beynon, who is leading this session, is a recently retired parish priest, now learning to be a clergy spouse, and with a deep interest in poetry and spirituality. He is the author of a set of poetic mediations on ministry, For This I Came (Canterbury Press, 2023) and is also the Chair of the Diocesan Spirituality Network.

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