In Hope of Revelation: The Poetry of John Ormond and R.S. Thomas

The Christian Literary Imagination Series

Continuing from the previous academic year, over the course of the 2021-22 academic year the Future of the Humanities Project is sponsoring a series of webinars on the Christian literary imagination in collaboration with Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford. The ‘Christian Literary Imagination Series’ will explore the role and function of the arts and humanities in the development of the individual and society.

The hour-long virtual events will be followed by a Q & As chaired by Professor Michael Scott and Rev Fr Joseph Simmons SJ. These events are free and hosted on Zoom by Georgetown University.

On the feast of St. David, patron saint of Wales, Georgetown professor emeritus Michael Collins will look at the work of two Anglo-Welsh poets: John Ormond, a filmmaker for the BBC, and R. S. Thomas, a priest of the Church in Wales. Although their lives went in different directions and their poems are formally distinct, they both nonetheless lived—in their poetry and in their lives—in hope of revelation, watching for some sign or signal that God is present to the world he created. John Ormond longed to believe, for he felt the absence of God acutely. R.S. Thomas, as his vocation suggests, believed in God but hoped that God would reveal himself in response to that faith. For all its differences, the poetry they wrote reflects profoundly religious visions of the world. Michael Scott, director of the Future of the Humanities Project, will provide opening and closing remarks, and Rev. Joseph Simmons, S.J., will moderate a Q&A session following the presentation.

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Michael Collins is a teaching professor of English and dean emeritus at Georgetown University. He has published essays on Anglo-Welsh poetry in Poetry Wales, World Literature Today, the Dictionary of Literary Biography, and the Anglo-Welsh Review. He is an honorary fellow of Wrexham Glyndwr University, University of Wales, and a recipient of Georgetown University’s Presidential Medal and its Bunn Award for Outstanding Teaching.

Rev. Joseph Simmons, S.J., (moderator) is an American Catholic priest currently writing his doctoral thesis at Campion Hall, Oxford, under the supervision of Professor Graham Ward. He is exploring the Christian imagination and the fertile place where belief and unbelief touch in the fiction of Virginia Woolf and Marilynne Robinson. Simmons previously studied theology at Boston College and the Harvard Divinity School. His Licentiate in Sacred Theology thesis, “Via Literaria: Marilynne Robinson’s Theology Through a Literary Imagination,” explored the convergence of literary and Christian imaginations.

Michael Scott (moderator) is senior dean, fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, college adviser for postgraduate students, and a member of the Las Casas Institute. He also serves as senior adviser to the president of Georgetown University. Scott previously was the pro-vice-chancellor at De Montfort University and founding vice-chancellor of Wrexham Glyndwr University.

 

Upcoming event

15 March:
Bridget Keegan on James Field Stanfield

Contact:
Las Casas Institute with Georgetown University
lascasas@bfriars.ox.ac.uk