Aidan Dun - About Vale Royal (08 Jan 2009)

The valley of the lost Fleet River in Kings Cross is surrounded by the old hills of London, the high places. Vale Royal is a geographical vessel, a symbolic container of the quiet mind, a perfect place to realise the vision of oneness.

Kings Cross has exerted a magnetic attraction down the centuries. The artists, the poets have made this forgotten place royal with their presence. And they themselves are royal because they are visionaries, in rebellion against the human condition and its suffering.

In the poem Vale Royal the cosmic lifecycle of the Sunchild, the Mighty Youth, born with a vision and dying an early death, reflects the exiled life and redemption of the artist. Chatterton and Blake play his role in the work's two movements.