On 11 September The Blake Society was delighted to attend the unveiling of the restored Blake Mosaics, based on pages from Songs of Innocence and Of Experience, at Surbiton Station. The mosaics were originally created by London School of Mosaic and were displayed for many years in the arches near Waterloo station. They have been restored at Richmond and Hillcroft Adult Community College by Artist in Residence Jo Lewis, part of a collaboration between the college, London School of Mosaic, Friends of Surbiton Station, and Surbiton Art Trail. You can read an earlier Emanation on the project by RHACC Programme Leader Anna Stearman here.  On the day, we retired to Richmond and Hillcroft Adult Community College for coffee and pastries, where Blake Society Trustee John Riordan made the...

Jason Wright introduces his new book, which analyses Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job and shows their relevance in clinical psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. I am a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist; prior to this, I worked in theatre as a director and a manager. As I transitioned between the not-so-different traditions, I became close to Blake. Whilst training, I offered to make a presentation about the Jungian Self. Edinger, a Jungian analyst, had written using Blake’s Job myth exploring the relationship between the Self, the archetype of the whole of the individual human experience rooted in a collective unconscious and the ego, the archetype where consciousness arises. The relationship explored is rooted in symbol formation not unlike the action of Blake’s contraries. Symbol in...

Agricultural scientist Keith Davies writes about his forthcoming book on Blake, science and the imagination. I work as an agricultural scientist at the University of Hertfordshire where I am an Associate Professor. At the end of July my book, William Blake, the Single Vision and Newton’s Sleep: A History of Science, Poetry and Progress will be published by Routledge. One of the major factors influencing my choice in becoming a scientist was Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man TV series, but I had grown up in a household full of my mother’s poetry books and therefore also had an interest in the arts. One day as an undergraduate and browsing in the college bookshop, at the then Hatfield Polytechnic, I came across a paperback of William Blake’s poems edited and introduced by Bronowski. At...

Comic artist and Blake enthusiast David Battersby shares his comic strip version of The Book of Los and reflects on the experience of adapting Blake’s poetry and art. Believe it or not, I did not set out to adapt The Book of Los into a comic strip. It just happened that way. It all started with the cover art. I thought it would be fun to adapt the cover of the first issue of Superman and replace Superman’s image with that of Los. Superman gets his powers from the yellow sun and the name of Los spelt backwards is Sol, which is the Latin word for sun. So that was essentially the connection I was making for my original visual pun. But that first act left me with an itch I wanted to scratch, and I thought ‘Why not adapt the whole of Blake’s book that way?’ After all, the poem is only four...

On Monday 22 May the Blake Society attended Swedenborg House to launch Ruskin Arts Publications' new visual edition of ‘Auguries of Innocence’, collating Cambridge School of Art graphic design students' letterpress interpretations of Blake's poem. Below is an edited version of a speech, given on the night, by Sibylle Erle, Chair of the Blake Society. When Nick Jeeves asked me to write and say something about Blake, my favourite artist, and ‘Auguries of Innocence’, a text I knew but had never worked on, I was delighted but also terrified because I didn’t know where to start. ‘Auguries of Innocence’ is a manuscript poem. It’s a fair copy, it includes all of Blake’s revisions and corrections; it has no pictures. It consists of 66 couplets as well as one quatrain: To see a World in a Grain...

Next month Ruskin Arts Publications, supported by The Blake Society, publishes a new visual edition of ‘Auguries of Innocence’. In advance of the launch event on Monday 22 May at Swedenborg House, some reflections by editor and project director Nicholas Jeeves. On the front cover of our book, titled Auguries of Innocence: First Experiences with Letterpress, a short piece of text sets the scene: Each year from 2014 to 2018 graphic design students at Cambridge School of Art were assigned a brief: to typeset and print in letterpress a couplet from William Blake’s ‘Auguries of Innocence’. None of them had used letterpress before. A selection of their prints is collected in this unique visual edition of ‘Auguries of Innocence’, comprising the poem in its entirety and revealing an intriguing...

Anna Stearman, Programme Manager for the School of Ideas, Richmond and Hillcroft Adult Community College, writes about their current project to restore the mosaics of Blake's Lambeth. I’m standing in a light-filled art room at Hillcroft College, ten miles west of London Waterloo. Many thousands of tiny tiles are gathered on benches around me, arranged by size, texture and colour. These are single ‘pages’ of an enormous, unbound book: emanations in mosaic from Songs of Innocence and of Experience. These are pages that, until recently, were only to be seen mounted in the underground tunnels, streets and walkways of Lambeth, around Waterloo Station in London. Made from ceramic, vitreous glass, stone, bone and marble, what I am seeing are interpretations of pages from one of the most...

Here at Golgonooza Towers (the imaginary headquarters of The Blake Society), we recently received a fascinating email from Jami Cassady Ratto, the daughter of Neal and Carolyn Cassady.  For those not in the know, Neal Cassady was the fast-talking, hard-living muse of the Beat Generation, immortalised by Jack Kerouac as Dean Moriarty in On the Road and Cody Pomeray in his later novels. In the 60s he joined Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters and drove their psychedelic bus. Carolyn met and married Neal in the 40s and had long relationships with Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Her memoir, Off the Road: Twenty Years with Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg was published in 1990. What I hadn’t realised is that for the last 30 years of her life Carolyn lived in England, at first in London and later in...

A Creative Connections post by artist Andrea McLean. The Frontispiece of William Blake’s illuminated book Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion shows a luminous symbol. The concentric disk of light can be seen simply as a lamp light. At first, this is the way the overall plate is likely to be understood. A figure, Los, the archetypal artist, steps over the threshold of a gothic arched door. Circles of light show the place where, if there was a lamp, a lamp would be. Los, however, does not hold a lamp. His fingers hold nothing of any weight, they are separated and integrated into the light. The lightest hold, the easiest way to hold something in one hand when walking, named the ‘satchel-hold’, employs fingers loosely folded under the handle which is held in place by gravity. Los’s...

To accompany her talk at the Wellcome Collection, Chair of the Blake Society, Sibylle Erle, dims the lights and examines Blake’s macabre and mysterious Ghost of a Flea. William Blake was never the eccentric loner that his early biographers made him out to be. Blake had visions but he wasn’t mad. He was a Londoner and lived in a thriving metropolis. He went to a drawing school, was apprenticed to an engraver and studied at the Royal Academy. He was in a supportive relationship, had a close-knit family, many friends, patrons and employers. He was an avid reader, took note of radical politics and sympathised with Swedenborgianism. Though many of his ambitions were thwarted in the emerging print market, every aspect of Blake’s life gives opportunity to think about Blake’s social life.  John...

On 11 September The Blake Society was delighted to attend the unveiling of the restored Blake Mosaics, based on pages from Songs of Innocence and Of Experience, at Surbiton Station. The mosaics were originally created by London School of Mosaic and were displayed for many years in the arches near Waterloo station. They have been restored at Richmond and Hillcroft Adult Community College by...

Jason Wright introduces his new book, which analyses Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job and shows their relevance in clinical psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. I am a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist; prior to this, I worked in theatre as a director and a manager. As I transitioned between the not-so-different traditions, I became close to Blake. Whilst training, I offered to make a...

Agricultural scientist Keith Davies writes about his forthcoming book on Blake, science and the imagination. I work as an agricultural scientist at the University of Hertfordshire where I am an Associate Professor. At the end of July my book, William Blake, the Single Vision and Newton’s Sleep: A History of Science, Poetry and Progress will be published by Routledge. One of the major factors...

Comic artist and Blake enthusiast David Battersby shares his comic strip version of The Book of Los and reflects on the experience of adapting Blake’s poetry and art. Believe it or not, I did not set out to adapt The Book of Los into a comic strip. It just happened that way. It all started with the cover art. I thought it would be fun to adapt the cover of the first issue of Superman and replace...

On Monday 22 May the Blake Society attended Swedenborg House to launch Ruskin Arts Publications' new visual edition of ‘Auguries of Innocence’, collating Cambridge School of Art graphic design students' letterpress interpretations of Blake's poem. Below is an edited version of a speech, given on the night, by Sibylle Erle, Chair of the Blake Society. When Nick Jeeves asked me to write and say...

Next month Ruskin Arts Publications, supported by The Blake Society, publishes a new visual edition of ‘Auguries of Innocence’. In advance of the launch event on Monday 22 May at Swedenborg House, some reflections by editor and project director Nicholas Jeeves. On the front cover of our book, titled Auguries of Innocence: First Experiences with Letterpress, a short piece of text sets the scene:...

Anna Stearman, Programme Manager for the School of Ideas, Richmond and Hillcroft Adult Community College, writes about their current project to restore the mosaics of Blake's Lambeth. I’m standing in a light-filled art room at Hillcroft College, ten miles west of London Waterloo. Many thousands of tiny tiles are gathered on benches around me, arranged by size, texture and colour. These are...

Here at Golgonooza Towers (the imaginary headquarters of The Blake Society), we recently received a fascinating email from Jami Cassady Ratto, the daughter of Neal and Carolyn Cassady.  For those not in the know, Neal Cassady was the fast-talking, hard-living muse of the Beat Generation, immortalised by Jack Kerouac as Dean Moriarty in On the Road and Cody Pomeray in his later novels. In the 60s...

A Creative Connections post by artist Andrea McLean. The Frontispiece of William Blake’s illuminated book Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion shows a luminous symbol. The concentric disk of light can be seen simply as a lamp light. At first, this is the way the overall plate is likely to be understood. A figure, Los, the archetypal artist, steps over the threshold of a gothic arched...

To accompany her talk at the Wellcome Collection, Chair of the Blake Society, Sibylle Erle, dims the lights and examines Blake’s macabre and mysterious Ghost of a Flea. William Blake was never the eccentric loner that his early biographers made him out to be. Blake had visions but he wasn’t mad. He was a Londoner and lived in a thriving metropolis. He went to a drawing school, was apprenticed to...

On 11 September The Blake Society was delighted to attend the unveiling of the restored Blake Mosaics, based on pages from Songs of Innocence and Of Experience, at Surbiton Station. The mosaics were originally created by London School of Mosaic and...

Jason Wright introduces his new book, which analyses Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job and shows their relevance in clinical psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. I am a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist; prior to this, I worked in theatre as a...

Agricultural scientist Keith Davies writes about his forthcoming book on Blake, science and the imagination. I work as an agricultural scientist at the University of Hertfordshire where I am an Associate Professor. At the end of July my book,...

Comic artist and Blake enthusiast David Battersby shares his comic strip version of The Book of Los and reflects on the experience of adapting Blake’s poetry and art. Believe it or not, I did not set out to adapt The Book of Los into a comic strip....

On Monday 22 May the Blake Society attended Swedenborg House to launch Ruskin Arts Publications' new visual edition of ‘Auguries of Innocence’, collating Cambridge School of Art graphic design students' letterpress interpretations of Blake's poem....

Next month Ruskin Arts Publications, supported by The Blake Society, publishes a new visual edition of ‘Auguries of Innocence’. In advance of the launch event on Monday 22 May at Swedenborg House, some reflections by editor and project director...

Anna Stearman, Programme Manager for the School of Ideas, Richmond and Hillcroft Adult Community College, writes about their current project to restore the mosaics of Blake's Lambeth. I’m standing in a light-filled art room at Hillcroft College,...

Here at Golgonooza Towers (the imaginary headquarters of The Blake Society), we recently received a fascinating email from Jami Cassady Ratto, the daughter of Neal and Carolyn Cassady.  For those not in the know, Neal Cassady was the fast-talking,...

A Creative Connections post by artist Andrea McLean. The Frontispiece of William Blake’s illuminated book Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion shows a luminous symbol. The concentric disk of light can be seen simply as a lamp light. At...

To accompany her talk at the Wellcome Collection, Chair of the Blake Society, Sibylle Erle, dims the lights and examines Blake’s macabre and mysterious Ghost of a Flea. William Blake was never the eccentric loner that his early biographers made him...