William Blake Again

For many years William Blake was a somewhat neglected artist and poet, but now scarcely a week goes by without something Blakean going on somewhere in London. Here's a few connected to South London:

- the Blake Society were involved in planting an 'angel oak' on Peckham Rye on September 18th, to mark the supposed scene of Blake's childhood vision of angels in a tree. Here's a report on it from Here Be Angels.

William Blake tree planting minicast by HereBeAngels

The newly planted Angel Oak on Peckham Rye,
(near the entrance opposiste Harris Boys Academy)

- as part of the Woodland Wonders event in Nunhead Cemetery in September there was a performance called 'Day of Angels and Fairies' by The Blake Poets (not sure exactly what this entailed, did anybody see it?).

- CoolTan Arts is having a Blake-themed Largactyl Shuffle guided cultural walk from Tate Modern to Bunhill Fields (where Blake is buried) - Saturday 19th November 2011, 12 noon start.

- dancers from Laban in Deptford are involved in developing a production called The Blake Diptych centred on the boyhood visions of William Blake. The company has a blog documenting their creative process.

I've explained about Blake's South London connections here before (with picture of the mural on Goose Green) - briefly the source for the Peckham visions story is a posthumous biography, but he certainly mentions Brockley and Camberwell in his poems.

In Hercules Road in Lambeth, where Blake once lived, there is now a William Blake Estate with a plaque on one of the buildings.