Page "Kathleen Raine" Paragraph 3

Raine noted that poetry was deeply ingrained in the daily lives of her maternal ancestors: " On my mother's side I inherited Scotland's songs and ballads … sung or recited by my mother, aunts and grandmothers, who had learnt it from their mothers and grandmothers … Poetry was the very essence of life.

" Raine heard and read the bible daily at home and at school, coming to know much of it by heart.

Her father was an English master at County High School in Ilford.

He had studied the poetry Wordsworth for his M. Litt thesis and had a passion for Shakespeare and Raine saw many Shakespearean plays as a child.

From her father she gained a love of etymology and the literary aspect of poetry, the counterpart to her immersion the poetic oral traditions.

She wrote that for her poetry was " not something invented but given … Brought up as I was in a household where poets were so regarded it naturally became my ambition to be a poet ".

She confided her ambition to her father who was sceptical of the plan.

" To my father " she wrote " poets belonged to a higher world, to another plane ; to say one wished to become a poet was to him something like saying one wished to write the fifth gospel ".

Her mother encouraged Raine's poetry from babyhood.