My Alter Ego - Kathleen Raine

Can you imagine who you might have been if you'd lived at a different point in history? That's what the presenters of My Alter Ego have been asked to do. Each programme in the series is presented by someone whose life, career, or mind-set shares some similarities with a character from history. Kathleen Raine was one of the outstanding poets of the 20th century. Born in 1908, and dying at the age of 95 in 2003, she produced a large and critically acclaimed body of work. Philip Larkin said of her 1956 book of collected poems: 'Her work lacks every quality traditionally associated with the title poetess: there is no domesticity, no cosiness, and love poems of a personal nature, the introduction tells us, have also gone, what remains is the vatic and universal'. The poet Katrina Porteous can identify with much of Kathleen Raine's life and work: they share Scottish roots, a Cambridge education, and a connection with Northumberland where Kathleen was evacuated during the 1st World War, and where Katrina has chosen to live. Kathleen had a deep, but ultimately unhappy friendship with the author Gavin Maxwell. She was devoted to him, and inspired by him, regarding him as a muse, but their chaste friendship broke-down and Kathleen blamed herself for this. Katrina Porteous was given the autobiographies of Kathleen Raine by a friend who recognised similarities between Kathleen's sources of inspiration and something Katrina herself had experienced. On today's My Alter Ego, Katrina discusses the connections in life and poetry - between her and Kathleen Raine. Producer: Karen Gregor.