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Martian Poets Everyday Human Poetry Was Minor Movement In British Poetry

The Martian Poets movement (late 1970s-early 1980s UK) described everyday life from an alien perspective, featuring poets like Craig Raine and Christopher Reid.

The Martian Poets, including Craig Raine and Christopher Reid, were a movement in late 1970s/early 1980s British poetry that described everyday life from an outsider's perspective. The term 'Martianism' also applies to fiction and is coincidentally an anagram of Martin Amis, a promoter of Raine and Reid.

Front The Martian Poets
Back Martian poetry was a minor movement in British poetry in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in which everyday things and human behaviour are described in a strange way, as if by a visiting Martian who does not understand them. Poets most closely associated with it are Craig Raine and Christopher Reid.

The term Martianism has also been applied more widely to include fiction as well as to poetry. The word martianism is, coincidentally, an anagram of one of its principal exponents, Martin Amis, who promoted the work of both Raine and Reid in the Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman.[1]

Perhaps the most known martian poetry is Craig Raine's "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home" in which a Martian attempts to describe everyday human interactions and habits through his point of view.

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