The 34th edition of the Gerard Manley Hopkins International Festival took place in Newbridge, Kildare between 22-29 July. One of Ireland’s foremost literary events, the Festival celebrates the life and work of Hopkins, English poet and Jesuit priest (1844–1889) who in 1884 was appointed professor of Greek Literature at University College, Dublin. Even though only few of Hopkins’s verses were printed before his untimely death of typhoid fever, his collected works were published in 1918 by Robert Bridges, then poet laureate, and went on to exert significant influence on such eminent poets as T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden and Dylan Thomas. Hopkins’s innovative use of the prosodic element of “sprung rhythm” as well as his vibrant synthesis of personal experiences, astute observation of nature and engagement with the divine mystery are commemorated to this day, poignantly revisited by contemporary poets and scholars alike.