Theatre of Trope: Craig Raine and Christopher Reid

Abstract

The ‘Martian’ phenomenon, as it has mushroomed since 1978, exemplifies at its most conspicuous the intersection of poetry with the literary politics of reviewing and the publishing industry. Since James Fenton multiplied Craig Raine and Christopher Reid into a ‘Martian’ school of poets, media exposure, and the antagonism it arouses, has threatened to displace attention from the poetry itself towards its slick marketing and its influential hyping by reviewers from the London establishment and the so-called ‘Oxford mafia’.¹ The Martian idiom pervades entries to poetry competitions and has been canonised by Raine’s appointment as poetry editor at Faber and by his choice of Reid to deputise for him during a year’s sabbatical leave (1986–7). Of course, as Raine reminds us, every new style must create the taste by which it is to be enjoyed.² But what is disturbing about the Martian phenomenon is the rapidity and the comprehensiveness with which it has come to dominate poetic fashion. Blanket coverage in the media has been reinforced by the unprecedented sales of Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion’s ambitious Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry (Harmondsworth, 1982), whose introduction used ‘ludic’ ingenuity as a criterion to justify its selections and even attempted to annex Douglas Dunn and Tony Harrison into the Martian camp. Spring 1981 saw the first Martian-derivative collection, David Sweetman’s Looking into the Deep End, selected as a Poetry Book Society Choice; that autumn the Poetry Society invited entrants to its Members’ Competition ‘to write a poem in the style of Craig Raine—the so-called “Martian” style’. The excitement of a distinctive idiom was degenerating rapidly into formulaic pastiche.