Divine Images: The Words of William Blake

In Divine Images, Jude Rawlins has selected the poems that he considers to best illustrate his belief that Blake’s words are as vibrant and emotive today as when they were written two centuries ago. In his introduction he argues passionately for a renewed appreciation of Blake, the “visionary mystic”, as the artist’s artist, a man for whom self-expression and the divinity of love and art were more important than any material or intellectual pursuit. Rawlins draws a line in the sand between the academics’ analyses of Blake, and those for whom Blake is the “patron saint” of the English Creative Tradition, an almost mythic hero who continues to inspire and inform artists to this day.