About Kathleen Raine
Kathleen Raine, (June 14, 1908, in Ilford, Essex — July 6, 2003, in London) was a British poet, critic, and scholar, specializing in William Blake, William Butler Yeats, and Thomas Taylor. She is internationally recognized as one of Blake's most profound interpreters. Raine attended County High School in Ilford and later studied science and psychology at Girton College, Cambridge, where she received her master's degree in 1929. Her poems are often inspired by the Scottish landscape and reveal a mystical vision of nature influenced by William Blake, W. B. Yeats, and Neoplatonism.Her first book of poetry, “Stone And Flower” was published in 1943 by Tambimuttu, and illustrated by Barbara Hepworth. In 1946, her second collection, “Living in Time”, was released, followed by “The Pythoness” in 1949, and her Collected Poems drew from eleven previous volumes of poetry were published in 2000. Her classics include Who Are We? She was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1992. There were many subsequent prose and poetry works, including her scholarly masterwork, the two-volume Blake and Tradition (published in 1969, and derived from the Andrew Mellon Lectures she delivered at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C in 1968), which demonstrated the antiquity, coherence and integrity of William Blake's philosophy, refuting T S Eliot's assertion to the contrary (Collected Essays, 1932). Known for her interest in various forms of spirituality, most prominently Platonism and Neoplatonism, she was a founding member of the Temenos Academy. Her poems are often inspired by the Scottish landscape and reveal a mystical vision of nature influenced by William Blake, W. B. Yeats, and Neoplatonism.
Browse all poems and texts published on Kathleen Raine
... the poem reminds us of what we ourselves know, but did not know we knew; reminds us, above all, of what we are.
