In the 7th Century, the monks of Whitby Abbey gave voice to an illiterate farmhand who believed he could not sing, by transcribing a song commanded of him by an angel in a dream-vision. That poem we now call Caedmon’s Song, and it stands at the fount of English literature, a tradition born from a prophetic call to glory God and God’s creation. But the monks went further than just writing down Caedmon’s words. They taught him to read scripture so he could compose further songs in praise of God.

It is in this beginning that Nehemiah & Blake finds its own calling: To rebuild the walls of this prophetic tradition safeguarded in the monasteries of England until their dissolution by Henry VIII in the 16th Century. But also to rebuild the walls of literacy that are breaking in so many communities across England today, believing that in these communities lie ordinary people like Caedmon, who are struggling with illiteracy or semi-literacy, but to whom God wishes to vouchsafe visions: visions that will bring hope, visions that will bring joy, and visions that will write against injustice.

Like the monks of Whitby, Nehemiah & Blake wants to be there when these visions happen. Nehemiah & Blake is thus seeking to be a community publishing project (but is not yet) that will not only publish prophetic literary works of writers in England, but also the writing that emerges directly out of a community of writers and non-writers physically living with each other and engaged with the immediate community around them. Particularly, Nehemiah & Blake desires to be engaged with, teaching in, and publishing works of a community where the problems of illiteracy and semi-literacy are fuelling poverty, sadness and injustice.