Among new releases in April, the first part of the graphic novel series, Her Infernal Descent, appeared. Written by Lonnie Nadler and Zac Thompson, with art by Kyle Charles, it offers an update on Dante's journey through the underworld as a woman is taken in search of her family with William Blake as her guide. I reviewed the first issue and the next installment is due in May. Another major event was the premiere of Daniel Kidane's Songs of Illumination at the Leeds Lieder festival on April 22, and again you can read the review of that performance on Zoamorphosis.com.
The end of the month saw the publication of Blake's A Descriptive Catalogue on the Blake Archive. Printed in a small run, the Catalogue was written to accompany his one-man show of 1809-10 and the one review, by Robert Hunt, branded the exhibition the work of a lunatic. You can read about the history of the Catalogue on the Blake Archive blog and view the work itself under Manuscripts and Typographic Works on the Archive.
Sadder news was the death of Alice Provensen, at the age of 99, on 23 April. For some forty years she had worked with her husband, Martin, on illustrations until his death in 1987, before continuing a solo career into her nineties. During the period that she worked with Martin they produced illustrations for a number of children's books, including the wonderful A Visit to William Blake's Inn by Nancy Willard. She is survived by her daughter, Karen, and you can read her obituary at The New York Times.
In other news, the Glasgow International this year included Mark Leckey's Nobodaddy, described by The Guardian correctly, I think, as a "deeply troubled figure" and obviously based on Blake's character of the same name. Meanwhile, a show by Alec Lewis at Tenby Art Gallery, West Wales, called The Painted Word demonstrates the influence of William Blake's art and poetry - as well as that of Dylan Thomas and Leonard Cohen - and runs until June 10. At Union College in Schenectady, NY State, the exhibition "Blake@Union: From Print to Digital" is on display in the Lally Reading Room. Curated by Caitlin Williams, it shows the College's collection of Blake works and will run throughout the summer.
A number of reviews of Jim Jarmusch's 1995 film, Dead Man, started popping up - such as this one at Slant Magazine, due to the release of the film on Blu Ray. If you haven't had chance to catch up with this classic, which is a great surreal western as well as an homage to William Blake, then now is your chance. There was also some musical news with a new album, Hollow Ground, by the group Cut Worm (named after Blake's proverb, "The cut worm forgives the plough"), although the other event was another death, this time of Bob Dorough, who wrote "Conjunction Junction" and worked with Allen Ginsberg on that poet's album of Blake songs set to music.
And finally, Blake provided another pop culture reference in the form of HBO's new season for Westworld, its dystopian vision of a future world of slavery and violence. In a reddit Ask Me Anything, director Jonathan Nolan cited a line from Auguries of Innocence, "A Robin Red breast in a Cage Puts all Heaven in a Rage". As Cindy Davis remarked in a review of the new season, "if that doesn't say it all, I don't know what would."