Kathleen raine

1908

Born in Ilford

1911

Family moved to Northumberland — landscapes of her childhood became the imaginative core of her poetry.

1930s

Married Hugh Sykes Davies (later annulled) and then Charles Madge; both marriages unhappy.

1930s

Developed fascination with William Blake and Platonic philosophy — foundations of her poetic vision.

1943–45

Composed Northumbrian Sequence — visionary return to childhood landscapes and Platonic archetypes.

1949

Published Stone and Flower

1952

Published The Year One — post-WWII spiritual response to modern disillusionment.

1950s–60s

Love affair and heartbreak with naturalist Gavin Maxwell — profoundly influenced her poetry.

1970s

Established herself as a scholar and critic of Blake

1990s

Recognised as a leading poet; awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1992.

2003

Died at age 95

Who is Kathleen Raine's key Romantic influence?

William Blake (visionary imagination

What is the central theme of Raine's 'Northumbrian Sequence I'?

Pre-existence and eternal archetypes; the soul existed before the world began.

Quote: 'Pure I was before the world began…'

From 'Northumbrian Sequence I'; evokes timeless archetypes and Platonic pre-existence.

Quote: 'Into my dark I have drawn down his light.'

From 'Northumbrian Sequence II'; shows the soul drawing divine light into human darkness.

How does Raine’s poetry differ from confessional modern poets like Sylvia Plath?

Raine rejects subjective self-focus

Context of 'The Year One' (1952)

Post-WWII; Raine sought to restore spiritual meaning against modern disillusionment and materialism.

Exam keyword strategy for 'Origin' or 'Light'

Frame Raine as inscribing personal lyric within archetypal patterns; contrast with modern materialist or confessional poetry.

Quote William Blake

Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.

Northumberland childhood

Raine’s early life in Northumberland was her “wellspring of poetry… where poetry was the essence of life” (Oldmeadow Sacred Web, 2025

Platonic philosophy

Raine saw poetry as expressing the Platonic myth of the soul’s descent and return (Sherrard, Temenos Academy Review 11, 2008)

Rejection of materialism

“Raine is antagonistic toward what she sees as the positivist and materialist thought of the modern world” (Pursglove Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, 2020

Theme of pre-existence

Raine expresses Platonic archetypes: the soul existed before birth and will endure beyond death.

Northumbrian Sequence II

Poem where soul draws divine radiance into darkness: “Into my dark I have drawn down his light.”

Theme of illumination

Human darkness redeemed by divine light

Northumbrian Sequence III

Poem using birds as spiritual messengers: “Bird angels

Bird symbolism

Birds represent the soul’s immortality and its journey between worlds.

William Blake influence

Raine inherits Blake’s visionary imagination and cosmic symbolism.

Glyn Pursglove

“Raine’s poetry privileges myth and symbol over naturalistic observation” (Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry 2020 Glyn Pursglove

Northumbrian Sequence IV

Poem of storm and supernatural presences: “Let in the thronging ancestors.”

Theme of storm

Cosmic force embodying both fear and desire. symbol of transformation.

Ghosts and ancestors

Represent continuity of life and death/ linking present with timeless past.

Mystical hospitality

Poetic voice welcomes powers of nature/ dead/ unborn/ even pain.

Raine vs. modernism

Rejects irony and materialism; embraces visionary imagination.

Keeble. B 2003 Sacred Web

Keeble. B 2003 Sacred Web Her visionary mode "set her apart from the modernist agenda"

Sequence form

long poem in sections staging descent and return

Spell form

incantatory poem using repetition and vocatives as performative act

Fragment form

compressed elegiac miniature preserving vision or grief

Form function

Raine uses form as spiritual practice not passive container

Form contrast

incantation acts through rhythm while fragment crystallises through brevity

Northumbrian Sequence II (The Year One)

“Into my dark I have drawn down his light.”

On a Deserted Shore poem 3,

“Not where we live but where we love, the soul.”

Keeble 2004 (That Dream is All I Am: Reading On a Deserted Shore

Keeble 2004 (That Dream is All I Am: Reading On a Deserted Shore [fragments] They are elegiac talismans holding within a few words the reality of an entire life and love.”

Theophany

manifestation of divine through natural image

Light motif

symbol of divine presence illuminating darkness (Northumbrian Sequence II)

Spell of Creation chain

flower seed tree fire stone world revealing cosmic order

Fragment elegy

stone and sea as reliquaries of grief and love (On a Deserted Shore)

Exile theme

displacement from love or Eden becomes condition of vision

On a Deserted Shore fragments

grief crystallised in lapidary lines as reliquaries

Not where we live line

soul defined not by place but by love’s displacement

Claire Garnier Tardieu on exile

Claire Garnier Tardieu on exile exile is both biographical loss and spiritual experience (EBC 1998)

Late poems wisdom

exile transmuted into shared presence and ordinary solace (London Dawn All This)

Love Spell refrain

imperative incantation turning desire into ritual act

Spell of Creation love

love as generative principle linking joy grief and world

Amo Ergo Sum

existence affirmed through love rather than thought (Because I love … sun pours)

On a Deserted Shore love

soul’s home defined not by place but by love’s attachment

Pre-existence

The soul existed before birth and returns after death; central in Raine’s Northumbrian Sequence I.

Anamnesis

Platonic idea that knowledge is remembrance of eternal truths.

Incantation

Poetic repetition that performs a ritual or visionary act.

Archetype

Eternal form (Platonic / Neoplatonic) behind natural appearances.

Fourfold symbolism

Raine’s elemental system (air, earth, fire, water) mirroring Blake and mystical traditions.

Sparrow’s flight (Bede)

Human life as brief passage between darkness and darkness; Raine sets this against the eternal.

“Pure I was before the world began”

Key Raine quote expressing timeless soul.

Hazard Adams

Critic (1958) who described Raine as “enchantress and medium.”

Visionary poet

Poet as prophet, channeling eternal truths rather than subjective confession.

Adams 1958 "Objects assert themselves as extensions of a communal mind"

Raine’s symbols are not private inventions but manifestations of a shared, archetypal consciousness (Platonic forms) In Raine’s poetry, nature (bird, stone, flame) has agency — objects step forward as living presences, not inert matter. Refers to a timeless, universal order: the divine imagination or “human form divine”

Couplet

2 line stanza

tercet

3 line stanza

quatrain

4 line stanza

quintain

5 line stanza

sestet

6 line stanza

septet

7 line stanza

iamb (iambic)

unstressed stressed

trochee (Trochaic)

stressed unstressed

pyrrhus (pyrrhic)

unstressed unstressed

spondee (spondaic)

stressed stressed

dactyl (Dactylic)

stressed unstressed unstressed

anapaest (Anapestic)

unstressed unstressed stressed

Caesura

cut/pause in the middle of a line

Enjambment

line runs onto the next line

dimeter

2 feet

trimeter

3 feet

tetrameter

4 feet

pentameter

5 feet

hexameter

6 feet

Catalexis (Catalexic)

incomplete line at the end

Anacrusis

unstressed syllable at the beginning

Pure was I before the world began

Northumbrian Sequence I

Dark into dark, spirit into spirit flies

Northumbrian Sequence VI

Bring my lover

Love Spell

Spell away sorrow

Spell Against Sorrow

Home, home. All birds home

Spell to Bring Lost Creatures Home

In the word there speaks a world

Spell of Creation

Because I love/ the sun pours out its rays of living gold

Amo Ergo Sum

Let him be upheld in sleep as a cloud at rest on the air

Spell of Sleep

Shelter and hide from mouths of night

Spell of Safekeeping

And I repent / of flesh and bone

Two Invocations of Death

All that you were, are, and shall be forever

Message

Hidden is the heart

Lament

A word that the dead hear and obey in darkness

A Word Known to the Dead