FIVE NEW WILLIAM BLAKE WALKS THIS AUGUST: LONDON POETRY WALKS WITH NIALL MCDEVITT RETURNS

BLAKE WALKS EVERY SUNDAY THIS AUGUST 2021

After a long pandemic induced wait, Niall McDevitt's much loved London Poetry Walks returns with a deep dive in Albion's greatest visionary, William Blake (1757-1827), described by writer Peter Ackroyd as ‘the most powerful, most significant philosopher or thinker in the course of English history’.

There’s no better way to discover Blake than to walk the streets that he lived, studied, worked, and died in; streets that the poet wrote and painted into his mystical works. There can be few better guides to William Blake’s world than the wild, exuberant, and sage Irish poet Niall McDevitt; truly, McDevitt is one of the great Blakeans of our age. The walks are ‘highly recommended’ by John Higgs, author of William Blake Vs The World. As restrictions ease, these outdoor Covid-secure walks offer a chance to shake off our habits of confinement. This is a march for new visions.

McDevitt’s London Poetry Walks are riveting, welcoming happenings presented by the indie poetry publisher New River Press. A tour through London’s past and poems usually ending in a well chosen pub. McDevitt’s wandering lectures overflow with imagination and drama. His wide-ranging knowledge and original research, or ‘psychogeographical explorations’, are synthesised into a dramatic excavation of the lives of important poets. Previous walks have explored W.B. Yeats, Emilia Bassano, Oscar Wilde, Thomas De Quincey, Christopher Marlowe, James Joyce, Arthur Rimbaud, and Paul Verlaine.

William Blake, more than any other, is McDevitt’s chief passion. After five original Blake walks in 2019, McDevitt now returns with five more original Blake walks every Sunday in August 2021. The walks begins in Thomas Paine and William Blake (01/08) with an study of Blake’s relationship to the great revolutionist and political theorist Thomas Paine (1737-1809), a subject McDevitt recently wrote about in History Today. Blake and Paine dined together, and the younger poet must have admired the radical journalist’s bold denunciations of England’s ‘Crown, Lords and Commons’ . The next walk takes a mental health focus. Blake lived through the rise of modern asylum, and his visions left him vulnerable to accusations of insanity. William Blake and Bedlam (08/08) will pay visit to site of three infamous Bethlehem Hospitals described by Blake as ‘dens of despair in the house of bread’. Next, William Blake and the River Tyburn (15/08) strolls along the Tyburn river path to the Tyburn Gallows where for centuries mobs gathered to witness the execution of rebels, martyrs, and criminals. Capital punishment became the biggest issue of Blake’s late writing. He condemned this form of what he called ‘human sacrifice’, probably in part because he narrowly escaped the death penalty himself in an 1804 sedition trial. The penultimate walk William Blake and Swedenborg (22/08) addresses Blake’s vexed relationship to the scientist and influential theologian Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). Blake initially embraced the mystic Swede’s accounts of his journey to the afterlife and conversations with angels. Upon close study, however, Blake grew dismissive of Swedenborg’s one sided focus on heaven and limited moral imagination. This season of Blake walks ends in Soho with William Blake and Francis Bacon (29/08). Francis Bacon (1909-1992) disliked Blake’s artwork but was fascinated by the man, and kept Blake’s death mask in his studio. Bacon and Blake are two of London’s greatest artists, yet, with one spiritual and the other godless, in many ways they are diametrically opposed. McDevitt will close with a walking essay in the spirit of Blake’s axiom ‘opposition of true friendship’.

All walks start at 2pm.
£12 each or all five for £50.
Tickets are limited, please click here to purchase in advance.

For all press and other queries contact newriver@thenewriverpress.com

1ST AUGUST: WILLIAM BLAKE AND THOMAS PAINE

Though most biographers accept there was an acquaintanceship between the political philosopher Paine and the poet-painter Blake, there has been little attempt to imagine the massive impact the connection might have had on the younger man. The 50-something firebrand must have been the most exciting person Blake had ever met. Did Paine radicalise Blake? To what extent did Blake homage Paine in the character Orc, and rebuke Paine in the character Urizen?

McDevitt’s walk progresses from Angel to Soho locating the disappeared streets where Paine held court to literary London in 1791-2 and where Catherine Blake died a lonely widow on 18 Oct 1831.

Meet outside Angel tube at 2pm. (Around 2.5 hours ending at Oxford Circus tube.) Please click here for tickets.

SUNDAY 8TH AUGUST: WILLIAM BLAKE AND BEDLAM

When William Blake died in 1827 a spate of posthumous articles appeared in various magazines questioning his sanity. One hoax article even claimed to have interviewed Blake in Bethlehem Hospital where he had supposedly been an inmate for twenty years. In Blake’s own writings, though Jerusalem is namechecked countless times, Bethlehem is only mentioned once, disparagingly.

McDevitt’s walk takes in the site of London’s three historic Bethlehem Hospitals, and follows Los’s route in Jerusalem from the Tower of London to the ‘Dens of despair in the house of bread’ aka Bedlam.

Meet on Liverpool Street itself outside Liverpool Street station at 2pm. (Around three hours ending at North Lambeth tube.) Please click here for tickets.

SUNDAY 15TH AUGUST: WILLIAM BLAKE AND THE RIVER TYBURN

In 1803 William Blake returned to London, but he was still facing a sedition trial in Sussex in early 1804. Finding himself in Mayfair living within view of the disused site of Tyburn and on a street where the River Tyburn was flowing directly underneath, he developed a new humanitarian symbol for the final phase of his spiritual polemic.

McDevitt’s walk joins the course of the River Tyburn at Baker Street, finds the site of the lost medieval Tyburn Church, and tries to locate the mysterious ‘Tyburn Brook’.

Meet outside Baker Street station by the statue of Sherlock Holmes at 2pm. (Around two hours ending at Marble Arch tube.) Please click here for tickets.

SUNDAY 22ND AUGUST: WILLIAM BLAKE AND SWEDENBORG

As Swedenborg was the mystical teacher who later ‘turned on’ great Europeans such Balzac, Baudelaire and Strindberg, so he had performed a similar service for Blake at the time of the French Revolution. For some, Swedenborg seems to prophesy Blake. For others, he is a figure of fun, who has never fully recovered from Blake’s satirical portrait in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The two seem to appear together in Blake’s recurring image of London as an old man led by a child.

McDevitt’s walk begins at the site of Swedenborg’s burial, ends at the site of his final London dwelling-place and death in 1772, and will try to locate the site of the Church of the New Jerusalem where Blake and Catherine attended a weeklong conference in 1789.

Meet outside Shadwell DLR station at 2pm. (Around three hours ending at Farringdon tube.) Please click here for tickets.

SUNDAY 29TH AUGUST: BLAKE AND BACON - TWO SOHO ARTISTS

It’s hard to think of two English artists who seem more diametrically opposed than William Blake and Francis Bacon. While one is renowned as England’s greatest religious artist, the other is equally renowned for the godlessness of his oeuvre. Though Bacon hated Blake’s art, he was still fascinated by the man. Bacon had a copy of Blake’s life-mask in his Reece Mews studio, and – working from a b/w photo – painted a series of six unnerving studies.

McDevitt’s walk begins in Mayfair where Blake lived in obscurity and Bacon first exhibited Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. It then explores the 18th century Soho that was Blake’s birthplace alongside the 20th century Soho that was Bacon’s playground.

Meet at 17 South Molton Street near Bond Street tube at 2pm. (Around two hours ending in Soho.) Please click here for tickets.