Richard Austin recounts how he became a Hopkins performer in a charming essay (Hopkins Variations – Standing round a Waterfall. Ed. By Joaquin Kuhn and Joseph J. Feeney, S.J. Philadelphia and New York 2002). He first read Hopkins when he was sixteen years of age. He found the poems almost impenetrable. He then had a series of mishaps in his twenties: a man walked in front of his car and was killed and his marriage failed. He fell into the depths of a depression. He travelled and felt his soul soar with the majesty of the natural world. He found words from Hopkins reaching out to him

"like messages from a guide who had gone ahead to check out the way, or like signposts left for a lost man to cling to"

He found it comforting in times of distress to know that someone has been there before and had felt the same way. Hopkins became and remains a dear companion on his journey. When his relationships have been troubled, Hopkins has been there. When the stupidity and selfishness of humanity angers him, he has found that no one can express that anger better than Hopkins. In times of isolation or depression he has found Hopkins at his side. Whenever he has needed words to convey his sense of awe and wonder at the majesty of creation, the words of Hopkins ‘have been whispered in my ear’.

He read that Hopkins believed that his poetry was only partially complete till it was spoken; until it was spoken, it did not perform and was not itself. He then began to think that, perhaps, there was something that he could do for Hopkins in return for all that Hopkins had given him. He thought that by performing his poetry he could make his poetry live as Hopkins always intended and wished that it would live and also, make it more accessible and reach a wider audience.

Hopkins believed that his poem "must be spoken; ’till it is spoken it is not performed" because of its rhythms, shape and style. In a letter to his friend Canon Dixon in 1878 he explained the rhythms: Sprung Rhythm, Counterpoint Rhythm, and the further refinements of ‘outriders’ and ‘outriding’ feet’:

"I had long had haunting my ear the echo of a new rhythm, which I now realised on paper. To speak shortly, it consists in scanning by accents or stresses alone without any account of the number of syllables, so that a foot may be one strong syllable or it may be it may be many light and one strong. Also, I have written some sonnets and a few little things; some in sprung rhythm, with various other experiments – as ‘outriding feet’, that is parts of which do not count in the scanning; others in the ordinary scanning counterpointed." Letter to Dixon, October 5th 1878

"Sprung rhythm" is then regular yet free: stresses are firm, yet unstressed syllables aren’t counted. Thus the short line "Áll félled, félled, are áll felled" (six syllables) and the long line "As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding..." (fifteen syllables) are both five-stress, or iambic, lines. The poems’ shapes (or forms) are likewise original and strange: one "sonnet" has 24 lines, one huge sentence has 66 words and covers seven lines.

Furthermore, more than any other English poet Hopkins made use of alliteration, assonances, internal full- and half-rhyme and what he called ‘vowelling on’ and vowelling off’. His poems were written for the ear. They require an actor’s voice to convey their music, their rhythms and so their sense and feeling.

In Richard Austin, Hopkins finds the perfect performer’s voice: rich, skilful, clear, subtle, and musical, restrained and measured yet keenly sensitive to the myriad emotions that rise and fall throughout the poems. There is not an emotion in these poems that Austin fails to capture – the playful, the joyful, the meditative, the sorrowful and painful. His restrained but intensely moving performance of the grief laden and near despairing ‘terrible’ sonnets is the crowning glory of his work.

Austin hopes that, through his performance, Hopkins’s poetry will become more accessible and reach a wider audience. I am certain that there could be no better way to introduce Hopkins to people than by presenting them with this CD. I am sure that teachers will use it to great effect in their classes and that it will delight and thrill scholars and students alike.