William Blake

[graham]

This week’s celebration of Blake at Imperial College was a great success, attracting an audience of over 275 people, including many people from the college itself. The feedback received has been overwhelmingly positive, with many people commenting on the range and variety of the speakers, and the high quality of the poetry readings by actor Peter Forbes.

Tracy Chevalier started us off with the ‘ten things’ that people need to know about William Blake, a shorthand way of explaining the background of Blake as a London artisan, self-educated man, and seer. It was also fascinating to see the way in which Tracy took the idea of ‘living next door to William Blake’ as the starting point for her novel. The books themselves appeared to be selling like hot cakes after the event!

I would like to ask Tracy about the research she does before writing such a book set in a London very different from today. Where did she find information about habits and customs, food, clothes, smells, prices and all the ephemera of life in the 18th century. Does she worry about getting stuff like that wrong?

Given that this was a celebration of Blake as a visionary and a declamatory poet, many people also commented on how appropriate it was to feature the visionary poet Aidan Andrew Dun and the performance poet David J as part of the line-up.

I would like to ask Aidan to say more about how Blake’s vision for a Jerusalem built around Kings Cross might find a reflection in the modern-day regeneration of this area of London. At the moment the area north of the railway stations is a vast building site. Should the developers honour Blake’s vision by building golden pillars and marbled halls, or is it more about encouraging creativity and genius?

David J never ceases to impress me with his versatility and imagination. This time he literally took us for a brief tour around the cerebral cortex of William Blake. Would he be prepared to share some of his poetry with us online?

I would like to take this opportunity to thank again the Blake Society, and all those who attended the event, which I think was a fitting celebration of Blake on the eve of his 250th birthday.

[tracychevalier]

Hi Graham,

I research my books in a variety of ways: byreading, but also bylooking at paintings and illustrations of the time, and by wandering around. There are a lot of books on 18th-century London, some of which I list in the back of Burning Bright for anyone interested.

I also walked around the streets where I set the book, measuring, staring, contemplating. It was particularly hard with Lambeth because most of what would have been there in Blake's time has disappeared. Between the railway lines, Waterloo Station, and all the World War II bombing, Lambeth is a dog's dinner (sorry, Lambeth residents!), with very few glimpses there of the 18th century.

What helped me much more was actually a very detailed map of London drawn by Richard Horwood in the 1790s. He included every building (with numbers!), every garden, every cut-through. I felt I knew Lambeth better from studying that map than I did from walking around contemporary Lambeth.

I do worry about getting details right. Could Ann Kellaway really see a pineapple being carried down the street? (Yes.) What sort of wood are Windsor chair seats made from? (Elm.) How long did it take a coach to go from London to Puddletown? (A day and a half.) I want to get things right so that readers will trust me, and take on board the whole story. If I get something wrong (and I usually do, and readers write to tell me) it can ruin one's experience of reading.

I know, this must sound tedious. Thing is, I love research, so answering such questions wasn't tedious, but fun. If anything research is too much fun, and can be a bit of a procrastination technique!

[davidj]

HALO Graham Henderson an Forum Readers .

Writing can be an intresting journey
Internaly when we get a chance to look inside it can reveal so much
Layers of information as I always say .
Lyrickly It is a beautiful thing to see an hear the arrangement of 26 letters
In so many different ways .
An in the concept I presented it was important for me to take the angle of the
Mind .

what could cause the stimulisation of thought within a creative mind
before the birth of words are delivered from the mouth
to form language to movement,,then action .
so much can be drawn from quotations an the expression in Blake’ s work

Blake “What is now proved was once imagined”

Bards ,prophets,painters an visionary’s have always suffered some form of persecution
Largely due to expressing there beliefs
As an observer ive found in some cases that the people that are labeled mad tend to be more sane than those who choose to section an restrain them
Keeping many in bondage can be a recurring theme in life
Every creative person would want their universal thoughts displayed
free from ridicule an suppression

Blake ‘‘A Robin Redbreast in a cage puts all of Heaven in a rage’’

If an artist constantly continues to produce work even thou
they are struggling to survive from its benefits
i believe its possible for followers of any artists work to look in depth
an find the true motivation
understanding an purpose of each creation
within their own investigations .

Really was nice to hear the point Tracy Chevalier made about since
Engraver ,illustrator,writer Blake, had no children his work.
Gathered together could be considered to be his children that he never had
Your own extended family that could be embraced by every obsever an reader.
This I realise to be a very important factor , because it
can affect an alter the output,substance in the material
of work an symbolism of imagery.

Many expecting couples sometimes fear bringing a child
Of innocence an peace
Into a world of dimishing lights an amplified darkness.

I must say that the timing of the Poet in the city event was perfect
due to the Tate Britain Blake exhibition
An Mental fight club party
Blake society Annual lecture
7.45pm gathering at Marshal street
it has been A Blakenistical 250th.

Blake ‘‘Energy is an eternal delight ’’


To Blake an Catherine

Peace an Prose

[Aidan Dun]

WB Yeats was the first editor of the Prophetic Books of Blake. He was the first investigator capable of understanding the symbolism of Blake’s cosmology. Until Yeats’ pioneering work, the Prophetic Books were thought to be the wild outpourings of an unbalanced mind. Then, in the first decade of the 20th Century Yeats began to decode ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘The Four Zoas’ and while immersed in Blake’s complex system he came across the verse which I call The Golden Quatrain.

The fields from Islington to Marybone,
to Primrose Hill and St John’s Wood,
were builded over with pillars of gold
and there Jerusalem’s pillars stood.

My talk on the 27th of November was structured around a poetic analysis of this verse, which Yeats called ‘the supreme key to the London cosmology of William Blake’. The Golden Quatrain defines a gigantic rectangle around Kings X and the Old Church of St Pancras, believed by many to be the oldest church in the world, foundation date 312 AD. (This connects with the Matter of Britain and the tradition that Christ visited Britain to teach and initiate here in the ‘lost’ decade of his life, a tradition that Blake clearly accepted. ‘And did those feet in ancient times…) So when Blake says that Jerusalem was built in this zone of London and proposes that the New Jerusalem will be built here again he is suggesting that a new religious consciousness transformed by imagination and free of narrow-minded doctrine will emerge on this specific ground. As I understand it, (Yeats was very secretive about how he understood it,) The Golden Quatrain is a psychogeographical map of the four directions as interpreted by traditional esoteric thinking. It carefully delineates what is essentially a Cabbalistic system of thought overlaid on a metropolitan area of about twelve square miles centred on Kings X. Blake is superimposing on this part of London a quadripolar mandala which can be used both to unlock the symbolism of his Prophetic Books and as a meditational tool in its own right.

Time precluded on the 27th any discussion of what might be envisaged in Kings X if Blake’s prophecies should be fulfilled. (Many other visionary poets have also focussed on Kings X as the specific locus of transformation, among them Rimbaud, Shelley, Yeats and Chatterton.) From researches and investigations which have occupied most of my life I have come to the conclusion that Kings X is destined to be the place where art and imagination show humanity the way out of an existential impasse, ruled as we are by sadists and masochists, the politicians and the religionists respectively. Blake named this state of liberated being Jerusalem. I call this future zone Intelligent Playground. And right now, in 2007, I see early signs of its appearance, as many major players in the world of the arts, including the British Library, the Gagosian and the University of the Arts set up their bases in central NW1. Plans for the vast area of 60 acres north of the terminus submitted by Argent are moving in this same direction, with an emphasis on the aesthetic representation of the transcultural richness of modern Britain, though I must admit that the rectilinear architectonic of the proposed development leaves me cold. (We should be thinking and demanding curvilinear structures, pleasure-domes, the 21st century equivalent of the Albert Hall, domical structures made of Carbon 60, lightweight and transparent.)

Today, fundamentalist religion and the politics of any given nation-state have lost all credibility. I propose that Britain as potential flagship of world-peace dedicate Kings X to transcultural reconciliation, interfaith, and above all, futuristic celebration. I imagine family-friendly dancefloors, free of alcohol and drugs, playing the music of all nations and traditions, where our children can dance with us, where olders are not excluded. I see 5000 flotation-tanks in Kings X. I see white bicycles. World theatre. I imagine a major facility where the homeless can take showers and access the internet. I see the new mystic face of quantum science showing itself to the people. Above all I see the visionary poets of all cultures helping to show the way out of the hell which Blake called ‘state religion’, where God is always on our side as we self-righteously pursue the nuclear option (against Iran, for instance, God forbid.)

‘Exuberance is beauty.’ (Blake)

‘The agony of life can bring the greatest giant to their knees. But the action of dancing will set the spirit free.’ (Rumi)

I am conducting a large-scale urban sacred rite on the night of 20th December 2007. We will be walking the Golden Quatrain of William Blake round Kings X, culminating at dawn on the Penton of Pentonville, claiming the ground of Kings X for the visionaries. We shall be chanting and reciting the many texts which reveal Kings X. All are most welcome. (Participation is free.) Contact me via mailto:penconstructor@gmail.com for more details.

[Behel]

Dear All,

First, I would like to thank all the participants to the William Blake evening as this was for me a moment I will remember. I enjoyed all the speakers, from the poetry readings by Mr Forbes to the modern poetry magnificently recited by Aidan Andrew Dun and David J. Thank you also to Ms Chevalier for her good introduction to Blake's world to non experts like me.

It was for me the first time I participate to a poetry event and I truly enjoyed it. I have to tell you that my first language is not English but French. I may have missed various subtleties of the poetry read that night and I will try to read some of them to appreciate them more. Thank you to Aidan Dun for his explanations of the text he read that night. This is very interesting. I enjoyed very much that night the musicality and the rhythm of the texts. The way I experienced the poetry of Aidan Dun and David J was like a series of flashes created by the words, like seemingly unconnected pictures, giving rise to different feelings and emotions. However, overall, each poetry made some sense to me at the end and I would compare this to the same experience I have when I listen to jazz music, where a given tune is distorted, recomposed, modified but it always stays in the mood and atmosphere. Finally, although their style are quite different, Blake's engravings make me think of Jerome Bosch (Hieronymus) world because of his eccentricity, surrealist style and his obsession with hell and religion. I don't konw if Blake could have been influenced in some way by him?

I'm not sure if that makes some sense to you but these were all my thoughts during and after the event .

I also read recently an article in the french newspaper Le Monde about the work of Mr Henderson for creating a cultural centre at the house of Rimbaud and Verlaine on Royal College Street. Since it is very near to Kings X, this is an area where the paths of Blake, Rimbaud and Verlaine have crossed. Thank you Mr Henderson for all your passion and work for this project. The article is online for those interested:
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0 ... 668,0.html

Also, is there any building dedicated to Blake in London?

Finally, I browsed with pleasure the homepage of Aidan Dun but I haven't found a website other than his myspace page for David J. I have to say his myspace page doesn't reflect all the talents he has. May I ask to David J if he has another website where his texts can be appreciated?

[isobel-m-campbell]

The article Behel mentioned was very interesting - I didn't know you could speak French so well Graham!

I was interested in the idea that Blake would have been of interest to mental health experts were he alive today; I suppose it is because he saw and communicated with his dead brother every day that is so unusual. Yet I know his abilities to 'see' more than our normal 4 dimensional universe are what a lot of people on a spiritual path seek too. But what is 'there?'. What should we expect to experience? The definition of 'normal' is something sociologists have long grappled with. Well, despite our world being constantly defined by statistics and scientific methodology, I do enjoy the fact that Blake slips between our evidence of 'normal', continues to be admired today as a poet, and that his work continues to rouse and inspire us.