Paulin on Blake On the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Blake, Tom Paulin presents a series of spoken essays exploring the life and works of the great non-conformist English visionary, poet and artist. 4/4. He explores some of Blake's more complex writing in the unfinished epic Vala and confides his own frustration at not having yet grasped the strange and inscrutable mythological world of Blake's creation.