David Bindman

William Blake: Prophet of a New Age

Like many another poetry-loving boy I grew up knowing and reciting the lyrics of William Blake.  But it was only much later, during the 1980's, that I ventured into Blake's longer and more involved prophetic poems.  One of my guides was the Canadian critic Northrop Frye,  whose Fearful Symmetry (1947) was one of the first books to appreciate the scale and the reach of Blake's poetic achievement.   Another was the English poet Kathleen Raine in books like Blake and the New Age,  from which I would draw my title, and the two volumes of Blake and Tradition.  By 1987 I felt ready to share my discoveries, and, happily, both Frye and Raine, along  with a number of other Blake scholars were willing to take part.   Barry Macgregor read from Blake's work, and Lister Sinclair, who introduces the proceedings, also helped to choose the incidental music.  Here are the three programmes that resulted...