I am retiring after 45 years at ACU. While it certainly sounds a long time, I remember vividly my first days on Castle Hill Campus in 1977 and then the flow of new literature students, through Castle Hill, then Mount Saint Mary and occasionally MacKillop. Every year a wonderful crop of new faces, new enthusiasms!…
Category: Visionary Blake
Top of the Class ePortfolios in The Visionary Imagination ENGL329
A Section of Brett Whiteley’s Alchemy on display at the Brett Whiteley Studio, Surry Hills Here are the top 9 ePortfolios presented for marking in Visionary Imagination ENGL329- and again indeed it was very hard to pick between them, although the top 2 in the list scored the maximum marks possible. All are outstanding examples…
William Blake- Grand Finale
Today was the day that our illustrious group of students put their bodies, hearts and souls into dramatizing aspects of William Blake’s life and work. It was a wonderful display of how Blake’s ideas and life stories have touched the hearts of these young students. Their environmentalism, their concern for social justice and their care…
Sacred Silence in Literature and the Arts
ACU students are welcome to attend this event for free on presentation of their student ID on the day. Come and be enlightened as never before and enjoy the company and the good food. You can find the full program details right here: Sacred Literature Conference Program Final
Visionary Patrick White 2019: Riders in the Chariot
Patrick White: Riders in the Chariot What a wonderful world Patrick White takes us into in this remaking of the Australian social landscape in line with his own prophetic ambition to re-sacralize a spiritually desolate land. As he says in his essay “The Prodigal Son”: Because the void I had to fill was so immense, I…
William Blake’s Job Series juxtaposed against Brett Whiteley’s “Alchemy”
What an amazing morning and early afternoon was had by us all today, starting in the Print Room in the NSW Art Gallery where we saw the actual, original prints from William Blake’s The Book of Job series. In this transformation Blake tells Job’s story in order to show how religion needs to move…
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
I have also: The Bible of Hell: which the world shall have whether they will or no. For Blake The Marriage of Heaven and Hell occurs when the sanctimonious, commandment-loving Angel finally gives up his/her smug sense of superiority and happily embraces the flames of fire and joins the Devil’s party, a party which believes in the presence…
William Blake Songs of Innocence and Experience- Catch-Up-Week
Please find here the images and the wonderful audio discussions that wove around our exploration of some of Blake’s key songs, especially “London”, “The Divine Image” and “The Human Abstract”. Blog topics arising for this week include the following: CREATIVE: Use the first line of any of Blake’s poems and write your own poem, based…
William Blake The Songs of Innocence- 2 – With The Doors and Patti Smith…
Today we launched into The Doors‘ “Break on Through” and spoke about how this was a Blakean 20thC explosion manifesting musically Blake’s core idea of “cleansing the doors of perception” (from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell). We then plunged right on into Patti Smith’s wonderful “My Blakean Year” in which she sings about her heartfelt sense…
William Blake The Songs of Innocence and Experience 1
HI All, We had a fabulous morning (despite the sound system glitches) on William Blake’s “Contrary States” and then the way this idea is embedded and dramatized in The Songs of Innocence and Experience. We talked about the ways in which these ideas have been taken up by Allen Ginsberg, by the Rock Group The Doors…
William Blake Visionary Imagination 1
Hi All, this is where I will be posting up a great deal about William Blake and Visionary Imagination… stay tuned: William Blake’s Death Mask: what a powerful face! In today’s lecture we looked at what is meant by “Visionary” imagination, with a special reference to Allen Ginsberg’s epiphany in reading the poem “Ah! Sunflower”. …
The Visionary Imagination: William Blake, Patrick White, Brett Whiteley, Allen Ginsberg- Celebrating Class of 2018 ePortfolio/Blogs
BLAKEAN STORIES This was perhaps the most creative component of all the blogs: those many stories about strangers or family members who provided a trigger for seeing the world in a totally new way. Here is Jamie’s wonderful story about his sister from Vietnam in which he “describes a totally ordinary person in such…
William Blake’s “Grain of Sand” Alive and Well in 2018
Performances based around the work of William Blake and his legacy in Australia have taken place today in Strathfield (ACU)! What an amazing collection of young voices celebrating the continuing creative power of William Blake and his impact on such diverse talents as Patrick White, Brett Whiteley and Allen Ginsberg. Here are our pre-performance tutorials…
Riders in the Chariot- Final Classes
Hi All, today was our final excursion into the world of Patrick White, especially his representation of Alf Dubbo, the Aboriginal artist as a ministering priest of a renewed Christianity. Patrick White shows us how Alf Dubbo’s belief is restored through his visionary imagination and in this way illuminates the way in which William Blake’s…
Alf Dubbo (artist), potential redeemer!
Patrick White presents his hero Alf Dubbo -one of the four “Riders” in the Chariot- as a human being who brings into the present the transformative power of his aboriginal creative heritage. He does this through his deep animation of Christian themes, bringing these back to their true meaning in the sources of Christianity prior…
Alf Dubbo and Mordecai Himmelfarb
The Aboriginal and the Jew have a really important place in Patrick White’s Riders in the Chariot. They embody two outsiders who have the key to a kind of wisdom that is not available to many. What is extraordinary is the way that Patrick White locates the seminal meeting between these two central characters in a…
Some Fabulous Blogs from The Visionary Imagination.
Students completing a unit on The Visionary Imagination with a focus on William Blake, Brett Whiteley and Patrick White have produced their first batch of blogs and there are some wonderful entries. Here are some of the most compelling entries: enjoy. And thank you the creators! CREATIVE TASK- Write a letter to William Blake asking him…
Patrick White: Riders in the Chariot
What a wonderful world Patrick White takes us into in this remaking of the Australian social landscape in line with his own prophetic ambition to re-sacralize a spiritually desolate land. As he says in his essay “The Prodigal Son”: Because the void I had to fill was so immense, I wanted to try to suggest…
Brett Whiteley & William Blake 2018
Audio Lecture in the Brett Whiteley Studio Audio Lecture 1 in the NSW Art Gallery on Blake’s Job Engravings Audio Lecture 2 in the NSW Art Gallery on Blake’s Job Engravings Brett Whiteley’s “Grain of Sand” in Surry Hills & William Blake in Sydney: Blake’s “Job” in the NSW Art Gallery; What a fabulous connection was made today …
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell segues into The Book of Job, Whiteley’s Alchemy, Chaucer & Patrick White
Today we explore all those sections of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell that provide a real insight into Blake’s deepest creative purpose and that also help us to understand where Patrick White was coming from in Riders in the Chariot. So we looked at his subversive “Proverbs of Hell” which sanctify the unsanctifiable (in conventional religion); we…
Patti Smith & The Doors- their celebration of William Blake’s enduring significance.
Today we launched into The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and especially we began by looking at the ways in which William Blake has become a prophetic figure for the Age of Aquarius in the second half of the Twentieth Century and beyond. It was indeed William Blake who coined the phrase “the New Age” .…
Introductions to Innocence and Experience & The Human Abstract
Today we explored the 2 Introductions (to Innocence and Experience) and found that both these works give a clear insight into the motivation behind each of these books. The Introduction to Innocence presents the aspiration that these songs will celebrate the joy, harmony and sense of well-being that children bring with them into the world:…
Blake’s Songs and Letters
William Blake wrote many letters to his friends and enemies. These letters give a powerful insight into his experience and his thoughts. Most importantly they invite us in to the Visionary Imagination that was his gift to humanity. A letter like the one written to his friend Thomas Butts on October 2, 1800 gives us…
The Visionary Imagination: William Blake- Innocence & Experience Week 2
We had another wonderful engagement with some of the core ideas underpinning Blake’s vision of the states of the human psyche that are so powerfully dramatized through the contrast between his two books The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience. We looked today especially at the two Nurse’s Songs, one presenting the state of containment and inner…
The Visionary Imagination – Week 1!
What a great start to our exploration of William Blake’s transformative visionary imagination! Most of you seemed to grasp really well, through Ginsberg’s celebration of Blake’s poem “The Sunflower”, how Blake seems to provide a gateway to a deeper or heightened vision of reality. Cleansing the Doors of Perception, seems to be what Blake is…
Literature in Spring 2018
Hi All, this semester I am teaching Australian Literature to first years (with long-time colleague Elaine Lindsay): You can listen to Elaine in an interview she had on ABC radio recently with novelist Tom Keneally: http://www.abc.net.au/sundaynights/stories/s4432426.htm I am also teaching Twentieth Century Literature to second years and The Visionary Imagination (William Blake, Patrick White and Brett…
William Blake, born 28th November 1757!
William Blake was born on this day exactly 260 years ago. William Blake was one of the greatest poets of the English language, but he was also a mystic whose vision continues to inform the lives of many people. His vision was Christian, but it was so broadly Christian that it included all religions. One…
BlakeanPineappleCoconutsBBsBlakesoniansBlakettes….
Our Blakean students today created some wonderful drama pieces that captured the life, times and contemporary significance of William Blake. There were dramatizations of some of his greatest poems (e.g “London”) with animations of overcrowded London streets; there were scenes of contemporary life emphasizing the fact that we spend too much time on chasing the dollar…
Remembering Babylon- David Malouf
Whether this is Jerusalem or Babylon we know not: William Blake The Four Zoas. With this epigraph from William Blake, David Malouf challenges us to consider whether the colonial Australian world that he evokes in this beautiful novel is a place in which harmony might evolve, or in which chaos and lamentation might descend. It is…
Patrick White’s Gift of Reconciliation
Patrick White had the extraordinary insight, back in 1961 to write about the amazing creativity inherent in his Aboriginal character Alf Dubbo who plays a leading role in the novel Riders in the Chariot. The novel won the Miles Franklin award in that year and then in 1965 won the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society. Patrick White’s…
Highlights from first cull of Twentieth Century Literature Blogs!
What a totally amazing collection of Blogs from students studying 20th Century Literature at ACU. There is such depth and variety in this swag of great entries. Congratulations to all of you – and to those who didn’t quite make this list. This is just to give you an idea of the riches I have…
Highlights from the first trawl through William Blake and the Visionary Imagination.
ACU Students in this unit have produced some awesome entries inspired by their reading of William Blake. Enjoy some of these wonderfully creative expositions of Blake’s continuing relevance to our own times: Johanna Powers description of Blake’s human qualities: https://johannapower.wordpress.com/2016/08/23/week-4-blog-post/ Caitlyn Tuckerman on Job’s Nightmares https://caitlyntuckerman.wordpress.com/2016/09/06/jobs-nightmare/#comments Jesse Ocsan– tales of Experience: the ambulance man. https://ocsanj.wordpress.com/2016/08/23/week-3-tale-of-experience/…
Patrick White: Riders in the Chariot
What a wonderful world Patrick White takes us into in this remaking of the Australian social landscape in line with his own prophetic ambition to re-sacralize a spiritually desolate land. As he says in his essay “The Prodigal Son”: Because the void I had to fill was so immense, I wanted to try to suggest…
Bush Walk to Cobah Point 11/09/2016
The Bush track to Cobah Bay starts around 10 kms north west from Arcadia: If you have not seen the spring flowers around Sydney yet this spring, then please follow me on this amazing journey: 18 kms in around 6 leisurely photo-filled hours! The spring flowers on this particular walk are spectacular. They are the…
William Blake: What Has He Meant to Me Personally?
Hi All, I plan to expand here on the many aspects of Blake’s work that have inspired me in my life and in my teaching. But if I put my ideas down here they may steal your thunder- and you have already heard so much in class about what inspires me about Blake. But I…
William Blake and Brett Whiteley
We had the mammoth task today of bringing together Brett Whiteley’s Alchemy and William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell & his engravings for The Book of Job– all in a two hour session! But we have all survived! And it has to be said it is a glorious field for exploring the power of creativity in…
Songs of Experience & “The Human Abstract”
I was struck today by a comment by someone in class who said “I am finding so much of what Blake writes about touches aspects of my own experience”. That is perfect and beautiful. His writing is hauntingly mysterious and yet somehow touches deep into our own imperfections and our own search for what is…
William Blake: The Songs
Blog Topics for Week 3 – Based on Weeks One and Two 1/ Take the first line of any one of Blake’s poems (looked at so far in the unit) and write your own poem celebrating a new insight that you have had as a result of listening to Wiliam Blake. 2/ Present…
BEST ePortfolio/Blogs SPRING 2015
Hello All, I want to share with you this amazing list of the best ePortfolio/blogs produced by ACU students during the second half of 2015. For their ePortfolios they had to showcase their best Creative and Critical Blogs, their Peer Reviews of others in the group, and they had to answer a broad question on…
David Malouf- Remembering Babylon.
HI All, Last Blog Topics for weeks 10 and 11. Creative Topics: 1/ Write a letter to Jock McIvor explaining to him how you yourself have been going through some deep personal self-questioning, trying to work out whether the company you keep is in the best interests of your own personal growth. 2/ Write a letter to…
Patrick White’s Aboriginal Jesus
Margaret Preston may have been roasted on a spit for daring to present Adam and Eve as an Aboriginal couple in offering this painting to the Blake Prize in the early 1950s. How dare one assume that our forefathers had anything to do with Aboriginality!!! Thus spake the right-wing factions of our country So how…
Patrick White and William Blake
Patrick White’s Riders in the Chariot begins with a quote from Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Blake quotes the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel in their roles as prophets decrying the materialism of the world in which they live and demonstrating how it is possible to discover the infinite in everything. Theirs is a cry of lamentation…
Oz Lit in the Twentieth Century
Patrick White was the focus of much of today’s lecture. His essay “The Prodigal Son” (1958) gives a wonderful account of why White came back to Australia after nearly 20 years in Europe. He describes his response to a materialistic, spiritually dead culture and yet sets out his determination to make a difference to this…
William Blake in Sydney: Blake’s “Job” in the NSW Art Gallery; Brett Whiteley’s “Grain of Sand” in Surry Hills.
What a fabulous connection was made today with creative genius at its source in William Blake’s (1828) original engravings for The Book of Job (1828) at the Art Gallery of NSW and in Brett Whiteley’s creative masterpiece Alchemy (1971-1972), displayed in the actual Studio occupied by Brett Whiteley during the last years of his life: So it…
Francis Webb Commemorative Reading of his Poetry- this Saturday 12 September, 2015.
Hi all, this Saturday afternoon, if you live near Chatswood you might take yourselves off up to the Willoughby Library where there is a special commemorative event on the poet Francis Webb. I will be leading off the readings and discussions since I am the biographer of Francis Webb and have been asked to say…
Blake’s The Book of Job and Brett Whiteley’s Alchemy
We are entering two weeks where the following two creations are going to be explored and contrasted. Blake’s Illustrations to the Book of Job are one of the most extraordinary sacred documents in which a poet/ artist reinterprets one of the most ancient and well-known classic religious texts along the lines of his own unique…
And now for the Grand Finale (of this first trawl through Literature Blogs)!
Please find here links to the best third year blogs. These students, most in their third year of literature, are studying “The Visionary Imagination” with a focus on William Blake, Patrick White and David Malouf. Let’s hear a round of applause for the following stars all who got full, or close to full marks!! Emma…
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: The Bible of Hell
I have also: The Bible of Hell: which the world shall have whether they will or no. For Blake The Marriage of Heaven and Hell occurs when the sanctimonious, commandment-loving Angel finally gives up his/her smug sense of superiority and happily embraces the flames of fire and joins the Devil’s party, a party which believes in the presence…
Most Promising Blogs from Twentieth Century Literature.
Please have a look at some of the extraordinary creative talent that is emerging in this group of chiefly second year students. I am on the warpath trying to encourage you to begin to take Vlogging seriously as a tool you can use in your own Blogs. For some interesting ideas on this please see some…
Most Promising First Year Blogs
HI All, here are links to the most promising first year (Oz Lit) Blogs. Enjoy some of this amazing creativity! https://morganjessie.wordpress.com/ https://annemariedimarco.wordpress.com/ https://benbotella.wordpress.com https://lauranema1.wordpress.com/ https://amarienguyen.wordpress.com https://asiyatrad.wordpress.com/ https://caitlyntuckerman.wordpress.com https://ninarwalker.wordpress.com
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