The Dark Horse: The Conflicted Spirit of Kathleen Raine

If and when Raine indulged in contrarianism, it was seldom for the sake of stubborn Devil's advocacy. Rather, she placed absolute faith – often at great personal cost – in the worth of her own vocation and, as she put it in 'A Defence of Shelley's Poetry', the 'transforming power of poetry itself'. Having grown up during the First World War, then raised her own children during the Second, Raine understood creativity, words and the work itself, as the 'right' site for ideological battles to be fought...

Described by the late, great Dennis O'Driscoll as 'among the truly outstanding poetry magazines of the English-speaking world', The Dark Horse has been Scotland's leading 'little magazine' for thirty years, publishing the finest poetry and related prose from both sides of the Atlantic. That makes it a particular privilege for me to see 'The Conflicted Spirit of Kathleen Raine' published in Issue 48 – the largest one in the magazine's history! As I mention within my essay, it comes some twenty-seven years after Kathleen's own contribution to The Dark Horse, back in Issue 7 (Winter 1998-99), and I have no doubt why she described the work of its editor (and my own man of light) Gerry Cambridge as 'poems through which blows the wind of joy in beauty and language'.

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Whilst our nation finally recknons with a cruel history of persecutions, prosecutions and executions assumed to be many centuries distant, it is sobering to note that Raine was shamed as a witch as late as 1968 [...] The taint of witchcraft has tarnished her reputation ever since: a smokescreen accusation all too often deployed in Scotland and beyond as a weapon against women who have resisted every other effort to subdue and subordinate them..