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Craig Raine (born 3 December 1944) is an English poet and critic born in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, England. He is the best-known exponent of Martian poetry.

Life

Educated at Exeter College, University of Oxford, he taught at Oxford and followed a literary career as book editor for New Review, editor of Quarto, and poetry editor at The New Statesman. He became poetry editor at publishers Faber and Faber in 1981, and has been a fellow of New College, Oxford since 1991. He is married to Ann Pasternak Slater, a fellow of St Anne's.

His works include a number of poetry collections (now all out of print)^[1]: The Onion, Memory (1978), A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (1979), A Free Translation (1981), Rich (1984), History: The Home Movie (1994), and Clay. Whereabouts Unknown (1996). His reviews and essays are collected in two anthologies: Haydn and the Valve Trumpet (1990) and In Defence of T. S. Eliot (2000). A short critical-biographical study of Eliot, T. S. Eliot: Image, Text and Context, was published in 2007.

He has recently submitted the manuscript for an experimental novel in the tradition of Milan Kundera entitled The Divine Comedy.

Craig Raine is founder and editor of the literary magazine Areté. His circle includes the writers Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, and the artist Mark Alexander.

The director and playwright Nina Raine and the playwright Moses Raine are Raine's daughter and son.

Books

Poetry

• The Onion, Memory, Oxford University Press, 1978. ISBN 0192118773.
• A Journey to Greece, Sycamore Press, 1979
• A Martian Sends a Postcard Home, Oxford University Press, 1979. ISBN 019211896X.
• A Free Translation, Salamander, 1981
• Rich, Faber and Faber, 1984
• History: The Home Movie, Penguin, 1994
• Change, Prospero Poets, 1995
• Clay: Whereabouts Unknown, Penguin, 1996
• Collected Poems 1978-1999, Picador, 1999
• A la recherche du temps perdu, Picador, 2000

Drama

• 1953: A Version of Racine's Andromaque, Faber and Faber, 1990

Libretto

• The Electrification of the Soviet Union, Faber and Faber, 1986

Criticism

• Haydn and the Valve Trumpet, Faber and Faber, 1990
• In Defence of T. S. Eliot, Picador, 2000
• T. S. Eliot: Image, Text and Context, Oxford University Press, 2007

As editor

• A Choice of Kipling's Prose, Faber and Faber, 1987
• Rudyard Kipling: Selected Poems, Penguin, 1992
• New Writing 7, (co-editor) Vintage, 1998

References

External links

• Areté magazine

From Wikiquote

Craig Raine (born 1944-12-03) is an English poet and critic. He has been credited with originating Martianism, a movement named after his poem "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home".

Sourced

• Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
  And some are treasured for their markings –
  They cause the eyes to melt
  Or the body to shriek without pain.
  • "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home", line 1; first published in The New Statesman, December 23 and 30, 1977.

• In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
  That snores when you pick it up.
  If the ghost cries, they carry it
  To their lips and soothe it to sleep
  With sounds. And yet, they wake it up
  Deliberately, by tickling with a finger.
  • "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home", line 19.

• The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple – to discover what has not yet been done, and to do it.
  • The Guardian, August 19, 1988.

• Great writers arrive among us like new diseases – threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible.
  • The Independent on Sunday, November 18, 1990.

• I used to carry a copy of Ulysses with me everywhere just in case I was knocked down by a bus. It seemed more important than having clean underwear.
  • The Guardian, February 10, 2004. [1]

External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

Craig Raine