[Deathwatch] Kathleen Raine, poet and scholar, 95

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Poet, Scholar Kathleen Raine Dead at 95
Thu Jul 10, 4:23 AM ET
	
LONDON - Kathleen Raine, a poet and scholar whose verse explored the
realms of nature and the spirit, has died at 95. 

Raine died Sunday in London, according to obituaries published in The
Guardian, The Times and the Daily Telegraph. No cause of death was
given.

Twice married, Raine never felt at home in the domestic environment —
she once described feeling "as if I were living in someone else's
dream."

After several unsatisfactory jobs, she met the nephew of the Indian
mystic Rama Coomaraswamy Tambimuttu who invited her to contribute to
his new magazine, "Poetry London" — and launched her lifelong passion
for all things Indian.

"Stone and Flower" (1943), illustrated by Barbara Hepworth, was her
first published collection, followed by "Living in Time" (1946) and
"The Pythoness" (1949).

Her chaste love affair with writer Gavin Maxwell, a homosexual, helped
inspire the works in "The Year One" (1952), which combines natural
images with a high degree of self-consciousness.

Raine stayed frequently with Maxwell on the island of Sandaig in the
Scottish Islands, but the relationship cooled in 1956 after she lost
his pet otter, Mijbil, who inspired Maxwell's best-selling book "Ring
of Bright Water."

Raine wrote in the visionary romantic tradition of Yeats and Blake.
Reviewing her "Collected Poems" in 1956, fellow poet Philip Larkin
praised her lack of jargon and vulgarity.

"There is no domesticity, no coziness, and love poems of a personal
nature, the introduction tells us, have also gone," he wrote. "What
remains is the vatic and universal."

She won many poetry prizes, including the Queens Gold Medal for Poetry
in 1992. In 2000, she was made a Commander of the British Empire, or
CBE.

Raine is survived by her son and daughter by her second marriage.
Funeral details were not announced.