Collected Poems, 1978-1999

Craig Raine's first collection,The Onion, Memory (1977), could be said to have changed the landscape of contemporary British poetry. This, together with his second, A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (1978) established Raine as the founder of the 'Martian' school where the poet forces us to see the most commonplace objects as miraculous. Raine presented a wholly original view of the modern world further broadened by publicaton of Rich (1984) and his epic verse novel, History: the Home Movie (1994) where the poet illuminates the details of daily lives. This was followed by Clay. Whereabouts Unknown in 1996. The Collected Poems confirms Raine as one of the most influential poets to have emerged in Britain since the war.