Multimedia Project of Isaac Rosenberg and William Blake

The crux of my work two artist/poets, William Blake (1757-1827) and Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1919), is in how they expanded the definitions of the man/nature relationship through mythology and spiritual exploration. In addition to audio recordings of readings of the poets' poetry that accompanies their artwork and selected words for emphasis, which I composed in a movie format, I created a podcast discussing my critical and analytical study of the influence of Blake's writing on the increasingly well-studied Modernist, Rosenberg. The exploration of Rosenberg is benefitted by a recent and first scholarly edition of Rosenberg's poems by Vivien Noakes in 2004. While Noakes' edition of his poetry is in itself important, little critical exploration into the influence of Blake on Rosenberg's poetry has occurred, although it is often mentioned in brief. Indeed, not much critical exploration into Rosenberg's poetry has occurred whatsoever. The natural elements of Blake's and Rosenberg's poetry and especially the difference in the ways they presented nature compared to their contemporaries, will stand foremost in this study. A discussion on how the poetic form is brought forward through their experimentation with spirituality and nature also figures prominently in this discussion. Both sought to redefine the specific understandings of personhood, states of mind/soul, virtues and vices, and relationships of man to the natural world. Each staunchly rejected all that was not included within their vision, however nonsensical to others, and neither artist could be bothered with the rationality of the absolutes of their age. 

(Source: Author's abstract, 2008 ELO Conference site)