For Kathleen Raine (1908–2003), poetry is far more than literary craftsmanship or personal expression: it is a means of awakening the soul to what she calls the ‘vertical dimension’, the realm of spiritual reality, imagination, and transcendent meaning. Drawing on writers such as Blake, Yeats, Rilke, Shelley, and Edwin Muir, she argues that the true task of poetry and the arts is to reconnect humanity with the symbolic and visionary consciousness through which the world is experienced as alive with significance.
Against the flattening effects of materialism and modern utilitarian culture, Raine defends the imagination as a mode of spiritual perception rather than fantasy or escape. Her thoughts explore myth, symbolism, inspiration, beauty, and the sacred nature of language with passionate conviction and remarkable intellectual range. Throughout, she presents poetry as a form of knowledge rooted in the deepest levels of human consciousness and in humanity’s enduring longing for transcendence. Lyrical, searching, and deeply learned, this is a powerful affirmation of the spiritual vocation of the arts and the enduring reality of the inner life.