Contents: Poem Summary Themes Style Critical Overview Criticism Sources For Further Study |
Craig Raine 1979
In 1979 Craig Raine received the New Statesman’s Prudence Farmer Award for his poem “A Martian Sends a Postcard Home.” Written from the point of view of a Martian attempting to describe what he sees on earth to his fellow Martians, the poem employs a series of metaphors to explain both natural and man-made phenomena. Often the metaphors make connections between technology and nature, with the Martian frequently describing nature or culture in terms of a machine. For example, the speaker calls books “mechanical birds with many wings” because he does not know the word “book.” The effect of describing the world in this way causes us, as readers, to experience the strangeness of our own everyday lives — to see things the way that an outsider would see them.
Raine created a stir with this poem, the title piece of his second book, and he soon had so many followers and imitators that the British press dubbed them “the Martian school.” Poets inspired by Raine’s novel poetic subjects and his strategy of defamiliarizing the everyday world include James Fenton and Christopher Reid.
