Blake Society Trustees

Blake Society Trustees

The Annual General Meeting (AGM) of The Blake Society will be held on Zoom on 29 January 2025 at 7.30 PM (UK time).

The Annual General Meeting is an opportunity for us to update members and followers about the key events and work of the year. We will also report on accounts and the new ideas and campaigns that we will be taking forward into 2025. This is the meeting at which the Trustees of The Blake Society are formally appointed to serve for the year, so we thought it might be a good time to explain what we do and to reintroduce the current Trustees.

We’re a dedicated group of Trustees, who work together well and effectively; between us we have a wide range of knowledge, experience and interests and can pool all that expertise for the benefit of the Society. As Trustees, we have a legal duty to ensure that The Blake Society is in the best possible position to further its aims and objectives. We have started the process of reviewing and revising the procedure of appointing Trustees, to ensure that it remains in accordance with the Charity Commission’s guidelines and legal requirements. 

You can read the full detail of our constitution here.

Want to know more?
If you’re interested in becoming a Trustee, now or as a possibility for the future, but would like to know more about what that involves or discuss if it is for you, you’re welcome to get in touch and we’ll have a chat and tell you what we all get up to. However, there are lots of ways to help out at The Blake Society and be involved in a way that works for you, being a Trustee is only one way! So, if you feel you have something to offer, from fundraising help to design or event organisation for example, we’d love to hear from you.

Meet the current Trustees

Sibylle Erle (Chair)

I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine:

Fibres of love from man to man thro Albions pleasant land

Favourite Blake quotation: Jerusalem, pl. 4, ll. 7-8, E146

Favourite Blake image: The Angel of the Divine Presence clothing Adam and Eve (1803)

It’s been another good year for The Blake Society and its Board of Trustees. I feel that that we have consolidated as a team and are brimming with ideas for Blake200, which I, in my role as Chair, would like to concentrate on in 2025. Two years to go: the bicentenary of Blake’s death is in 2027. We have just launched another beautiful issue of VALA (THANK YOU Jason, John and contributors); I am exhausted but looking towards 2025 with hope and joy – and more publications on my mind and in the pipeline. This year, I updated the Society’s Diversity Policy and initiated a consultation process with members on Blake, Race and Racism. I created a template for similar projects and more are to come. My absolute highlight was the meeting in Bunhill Fields in August and the conversation I had with Catherine (Blake Fellowship) and Helen (Blake Congregation). 

Sibylle Erle (Chair), a philologist by training, studied in Marburg (Germany), Norwich (UK) and St. Petersburg (Russia). As an academic, she has published on Blake’s reception and Anglo-German relations in British Romanticism; as an educator, she seeks out challenging topics, such as death and monsters. Sibylle believes in Blake’s relevance and significance for other cultures. She is writing a book on Blake, Tennyson and Swedenborg. 

Stephen Pritchard (Secretary)

Seek Love in the Pity of others Woe

In the gentle relief of anothers care

In the darkness of night & the winters snow

In the naked & outcast Seek Love there

Favourite Blake quotation: ‘William Bond’, ll. 49-52, E498

Favourite Blake image: Illustrations of the Book of Job, pl. 14 (1823-6)

I thoroughly enjoy the challenges of being Secretary of the Blake Society and would like to continue in that role. I welcome the opportunity to engage with our growing membership through direct contact, both in-person and virtually. Programming and hosting events have enabled me to meet Members from all over the world, and to celebrate the genius of William and Catherine Blake through an increasing knowledge of all aspects of their work. Writing articles for VALA has been a great joy for me. Equally rewarding is the opportunity to work with kind, talented colleagues and other Blake enthusiasts; and to learn from the wealth of academic, artistic and personal responses to the Blake canon.

Stephen Pritchard is Secretary of the Blake Society. He studied Blake at Exeter College, Oxford, tutoring undergraduates and running classes for undergraduates and graduates. Stephen co-founded the WOMAD Festival in 1982 with Peter Gabriel. He taught Drama for many years and has made eight educational Drama films. Stephen has created and directed an original multimedia play, Albion, Awake! about William and Catherine Blake’s life and work.

Roger Burston (incoming Treasurer)

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour

Favourite Blake quotation: ‘Auguries of Innocence’ ll. 1-4, E490

Favourite Blake image: Jerusalem, pl. 1, Copy MPI (c.1807-1832)

I became a member of the Blake Society in March 2022 and attended many of the Society’s meetings, both zoom and in-person events. Following Jason Whittaker’s desire to hand over the role of Treasurer, I was co-opted onto the Executive Board in September 2024 with the intention to take over as Treasurer at the AGM. 

My first real engagement with English Literature, in my early teenage years in Devon, was a fascination with the works of Charles Dickens. My mother signed me up to a book club subscription resulting in the reading of a book a month until I had acquired the complete collection of his works. His portrayal of 19th Century London was most influential in the desire to spend most of my adult life in this city. A very enthusiastic Blake scholar and Blake Society Trustee introduced me to William Blake who I knew very little about and the more I heard, the more I became interested in finding out more. I started watching the Society’s zoom meetings during Covid, attended the Bradford Literature Festival, visited the Cottage in Felpham, attended the Mike Westbrook concerts at Cadogan Hall and St James’s Church and the gathering last year at his graveside on the anniversary of his death.

Reading the Ackroyd biography of Blake’s early life, evokes the same image of 18/19th century London from those early images I had retained and there is evidence that Dickens was influenced by Blake. What fascinates me is the unique way that he translated his thoughts into poetry, prose, art and printing and the tragedy of his talent only being recognised after his death. As a Blake novice, there is much more for me to learn and I look forward to contributing to the Society over the coming year and beyond.

Roger is an international Human Resources professional with a background in Finance, now semi-retired having worked in international development organisations in the UK, Asia and America. Having more time to enjoy the arts, he has taken particular interest in the works of William Blake.

Camila Oliveira Querino

It is better to prevent misery, than to release from misery

It is better to prevent error, than to forgive the criminal:                                                    

Labour well the Minute Particulars, attend to the Little-ones:

And those who are in misery cannot remain so long

If we do but our duty: labour well the teeming Earth.

Favourite Blake quotation: Jerusalem, pl. 55, ll. 49-53, E205

Favourite Blake image: Jerusalem, pl. 28, Copy E (c. 1821)

I have been trustee of the Blake Society for three years and little did I know that the bewildered Brazilian student who joined a Blake Society meeting back in 2012 in London would end up in the Trust’s committee. Being a trustee has enabled me to organise and host events music-related, which highlights the intrinsic musical dimension of Blake’s work, and bring attention to the astounding influence and reception of his work among musicians and composers. I wish to remain as a Trustee to continue promoting music performances and fruitful dialogues on his impact in today’s culture, as well as to collaborate in the series of events and celebrations related to Blake200, the bicentenary of Blake’s death (2027). 

Camila Oliveira (Trustee) is a Fellow Researcher at the University of Lisbon, Trustee of the Blake Society and Blake Cottage Trust. She holds a PhD in English Literature from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro / Kings College London (2021). She specialised in interdisciplinary and multimedia studies articulating Music and Literature and is currently preparing a book on the reception of William Blake in popular music. She translated Jerusalem the Emanation of the Giant Albion into Portuguese. She wonders how Blake would have sung the lines of the epic Jerusalem, once he declared it was indeed a Song.

John Riordan

If you have formd a Circle to go into

Go into it yourself & see how you would do

Favourite Blake quotation (today): ‘To God’, E516

Favourite Blake image (today): Deaths Door (c. 1805)

One of the things that fascinates me about Blake is that he is neither a ‘words’ or a ‘pictures’ guy. He insists on combining the two in weird and wonderful ways, or perhaps he simply demonstrates the artificiality of the divide between the two. As someone raised on a diet of comic books his approach makes perfect sense to me. I also love the fact that this most radical and spiritual of artists was not a privileged, laudanum-addled fop but a working craftsman, attempting to make an honest living while relentlessly pursuing his vision. As I never tire of saying, Blake is for me the patron saint of freelance creatives.

I’ve been a trustee of the Blake Society since 2020. Since then I’ve been particularly involved in building us a new, snazzy website, and promoting our activities on social media. I’ve served as Art Director for our journal, VALA, ensuring that each issue is stuffed with contemporary art and illustration that speaks to Blake’s own rich visuals. I’ve also organised a few of our online events, in particular interviews with authors John Higgs and Daisy Hay, and the lockdown zoom quiz, Blakety Blake. I’d like to carry on doing these sorts of things.

John is an illustrator and comic artist. He created the comic strip ‘William Blake, Taxi Driver’ for Time Out magazine and is working on a graphic novel about William Blake with the working title of LOS, a project that he may well still be pursuing in Eternity.

Annise Rogers (Membership Secretary)

Am I not God said Urizen. Who is Equal to me

Favourite Blake quotation (today): Vala or The Four Zoas, ‘Night the Third’, pg. 42, l. 19, E328
The sheer arrogance and certainty of Urizen here is one of the reasons that I find him such an interesting character.

Favourite Blake image (today): The Sea of Time and Space (1821)
So much is happening in this image that every time I look at it, I see something new.

I have been enthralled with Blake’s use of words and images since I was a (youngish) postgraduate student in 2016, and since then my fascination and appreciation has only grown. Since June 2023 I have been the Membership Secretary of the Blake Society, and am, with other trustees, slowly updating membership so that it fits in with all the ‘mod-cons’. I have engaged with Blake on multiple levels, and very much enjoy making connections between those that were influenced by him, as well as those artists, writers and thinkers that inspired Blake. 

For me, Blake is an artist with whom many people could connect. I hope to promote a Blake who is a real person with a supernatural imagination and human flaws; but also, a Blake who people who are unafraid of not understanding, people who, like me, are willing to raise their hands and say honestly, ‘I have no idea what this is image or poem is about’.

Annise Rogers (she/her) is an Early Career Researcher focusing on Blake’s Vala, or, The Four Zoas, and her PhD looked at connections between this manuscript poem and different biblical, poetical forms. She has written on Blake and J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as in VALA. She has a chapter (co-authored with Jason Whittaker) in an upcoming book on the relationship between Blake and William Hayley as seen by Blake’s biographers. She is Communications Officer for Global Blake, an international network of scholars focusing on the art and poetry of William Blake. She feels that more people should read The Four Zoas but does admit that she may be biased. 

Tamsin Rosewell

If the step of a foot

Smites the heart to its root

Tis the marriage ring

Makes each fairy a king

Favourite Blake quotation: ‘The Fairy’, ll. 7-10, E475
At the moment I’m curious about William Blake’s poem ‘The Fairy’ , found in The Rossetti Manuscript. Blake uses wit and the conventions of what we’d now call ‘folklore’ (a term not coined until long after Blake’s death), as a social commentary. I’ve chosen this for my interest and work in folklore, we still use these ideas and images of fairy folk to talk about our own society.

Favourite Blake image: To go with my quote I’ve chosen ‘The Goblin’, from his Illustrations to Milton’s L’Allegro (c. 1816-20)
I’m fascinated by this piece as someone who works a great deal with modern ideas of folklore and fairylore. It seems to be depicting both giant and diminutive elemenal beings in and around his own Cottage in Felpham, tumbling, leaping and hovering.

I’ve been a Trustee for two years. As an artist and illustrator I was led to Blake first by his images, long before I found his words. I do not claim to be a Blake scholar of any kind; I am quite comfortable to say that there’s much about Blake I do not understand, but I still find that my imagination responds to it. I’m fascinated by Catherine and would like very much to continue the work I’ve started with The Blake Society to bring her contribution more into public consciousness.

Tamsin Rosewell was a bookseller for 17 years, but now works full-time as an illustrator. Her latest book is The Seamaiden’s Odyssey. She is a regular book industry panel speaker, as well as book prize judge.