Join a panel of artists and poets as they explore how London inspires them.

Born in Soho, William Blake delved into the bright and dark sides of London throughout his life. This special panel discussion brings together contemporary artists and poets to consider how Blake’s vision of London has inspired their own work, and how they imagine the city today. Contributors include the poet Chris McCabe and artist Sophie Herxheimer.

Sophie Herxheimer has held many residencies, including for LIFT, The National Maritime Museum, Transport for London and The Museum of Liverpool. She works across media, with projects including her screen-printed 300-metre linen tablecloth for a public feast on Southwark Bridge and her collage portraits of poets for the Poetry Foundation in the USA. Her work has been shown at Tate Modern, in her local allotments and on a 48-metre hoarding along the sea front at Margate. Her poetry collection Velkom to Inklandt (Short Books, 2017) was an Observer Book of the Month and a Sunday Times Book of the Year. Her latest book is 60 Lovers to Make and Do (Henningham Family Press, 2019).

Chris McCabe’s work crosses artforms and genres including poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama and visual art. He was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award in 2013 and his five collections of poetry include The Triumph of Cancer (2018), which is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. His first novel, Dedalus was published by Henningham Family Press in 2018 and was shortlisted for the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize. His non-fiction work includes an ongoing series of books documenting his search to discover a great forgotten poet in one of London's Magnificent Seven cemeteries and continues with The East Edge: Nightwalks with the Dead Poets of Tower Hamlets (2019). With Victoria Bean he is the co-editor of The New Concrete: Visual Poetry in the 21st Century (2015) and he is the editor of Poems from the Edge of Extinction: An Anthology of Poetry in Endangered Languages (2019). He works as the National Poetry Librarian.