Waiting for Robert: a fusion of poetry and theatre
Luke Welch is the author of Waiting for Robert, a play which explores the last days of William Blake, and is, fittingly, the final event in the Inspired By Blake programme.
Waiting for Robert is my first foray into the playwriting world, a world that was opened up to me at university by playwright and lecturer Seamus Finnegan. Tentatively I stood before its limitless echo as a poet, armed with my Doors CD, Rimbaud’s Illuminations, Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil, and of course the complete works of Blake and The Blake Dictionary. After a quick shove from Seamus the two worlds met. It soon become clear that the echo of this new world was indeed my own thoughts, hitting the boundaries I had placed upon them. As up to that point I lived by the motto that there is nothing more creative, or liberating, or sincere, than writing and constructing poetry. By the end of term the limits seemed to saturate themselves, and were quickly replaced by an intense focus on narrative, semiotics and the episodic structures of Brecht.
I have always been fascinated with those who trailblaze, who seem to be one step ahead, whose works are forged in fires of complete dedication – and who instil something so poignant it can break the shell of our ordained perception. For 15 years I have been reading Blake and for 15 years I have been instilled with a desire to create, and inspired to reach for the infinite and minute and love them the same.
It was this fascination that led to more in-depth research into Blake’s life, his marriage to Catherine and the cause and effect of losing his younger brother. Waiting for Robert is a crossover of poetry and theatre and intends to have William barefoot on stage, as a flesh and blood man loved by his wife, needed by his patron, and haunted by a personification of his fate. It is a fast-paced conjoining of worlds, where only one person can save him, and where mortality and myth meet.
Waiting for Robert will be performed in the bookshop on Saturday 31st Jan, 7pm. Tickets for the show are £5, and can be obtained by phoning 01865 333623.
