Raine, Craig
Entry updated 29 May 2023. Tagged: Author.
(1944- ) UK poet whose first book, The Onion, Memory (coll 1978 chap), demonstrated his capacity to illuminate the world through estranged images, a technique which came to full fruition in A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (coll 1979 chap), the title poem of which represents – in language which convincingly manifests a principle central to Fantastika as a whole, that the fantastic may be best grasped through the literal – an Alien's tabula rasa vision of normal human activities; the poem instigated a short but intense "Martian Poetry" movement, redubbed "Martianism" to encompass prose like Martin Amis's Other People: A Mystery Story (1981).
Raine's libretto for an opera by Charles Osborne, The Electrification of the Soviet Union (1986 chap) is somewhat fantasticated; and "1953": A Version of Racine's Andromache (1990 chap) is a Hitler Wins tale in play form, set in an Italy which, now ruled by Mussolini's son, has conquered England, bombing London flat in the process. His book-length narrative poem, History: The Home Movie (1994), invokes the supernatural, including an astral appearance by Arthur Conan Doyle. [JC]
see also: Martian.
Craig Anthony Raine
born Bishop Auckland, County Durham: 3 December 1944
works
- A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1979) [poetry: coll: chap: pb/from Paul Klee]
- The Electrification of the Soviet Union (London: Faber and Faber, 1986) [opera libretto: chap: pb/from Leonid Pasternak]
- "1953": A Version of Racine's Andromache (London: Faber and Faber, 1990) [play: chap: pb/]
- History: The Home Movie (London: Faber and Faber, 1986) [poem: hb/uncredited]
links
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