Martian poetry was a minor movement in British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 poetry in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Poets most closely associated with it are Craig Raine

Craig Raine

Craig Raine is an English poet and critic born in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, England. Along with Christopher Reid, he is the best-known exponent of Martian poetry.-Life:...

 and Christopher Reid

Christopher Reid

Christopher Reid is a Hong Kong-born British poet, essayist, cartoonist, and writer. He has been nominated twice for the Whitbread Awards in 1996 and in 1997. A contemporary of Martin Amis, he was educated at Exeter College, Oxford. He is one of the exponents of Martian poetry which employs...

. 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

Martin Amis

Martin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year...

. Amis promoted the work of both Raine and Reid in the Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman

New Statesman

New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....

.

Origins

The poet James Fenton

James Fenton

James Martin Fenton is an English poet, journalist and literary critic. He is a former Oxford Professor of Poetry.-Life and career:...

 was first to use the term in a short article in the New Statesman

New Statesman

New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....

entitled 'Of the Martian School'. Along with Fenton's article Raine's poem 'A Martian Sends a Postcard Home' was reprinted; it had first appeared in the Christmas 1977 issue of the same magazine.

Approach

Through the heavy use of curious, exotic and humorous visual metaphors, Martian Poetry aimed to break the grip of 'the familiar', by describing ordinary things in unfamiliar ways, as though, for example, through the eyes of a Martian. For instance, books and their effects upon readers are described by Raine as...

mechanical birds with many wings

perch on the hand

cause the eyes to melt

or the body to shriek without pain

This drive to make the familiar strange was carried into fiction by Martin Amis. His 1981 novel Other People: A Mystery Story where the story unfolds from the point of view of a protagonist who is apparently suffering from amnesia

Amnesia

Amnesia is a condition in which one's memory is lost. The causes of amnesia have traditionally been divided into categories. Memory appears to be stored in several parts of the limbic system of the brain, and any condition that interferes with the function of this system can cause amnesia...

.

Martian poetry became a popular topic in the teaching of poetry composition to school children.

Related to Surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

, it arose in the context of the experimental poetry of the late 1960s; but also owes a debt to a variety of English traditions including metaphysical poetry, Anglo-Saxon riddles, and nonsense poetry (e.g.: Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...

, Edward Lear

Edward Lear

Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised.-Biography:...

). Dr Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

's descriptions of the metaphysical poets' approach where 'the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together' could aptly describe much Martian poetry; in this context what was distinctive about Martian Poetry was its focus on visual experience.

Poetry

• Raine, Craig, The Onion, Memory, Oxford University Press, 1978. ISBN 0192118773.
• Reid, Christopher, Arcadia, Oxford University Press, 1979. ISBN 0192118897.
• Raine, Craig, A Martian Sends a Postcard Home, Oxford University Press, 1979. ISBN 019211896X.
• Reid, Christopher, Pea Soup, Oxford University Press, 1982. ISBN 0192119524.

Anthologies

• Morrison, Blake & Motion, Andrew, The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry, Penguin, 1982. ISBN 0140422838.

Comment

• Diedrick, James, Understanding Martin Amis University of South Carolina Press, 2004. ISBN 1570035164.
• O'Brien, Sean, The Deregulated Muse, Bloodaxe, 1998. ISBN 1852242817.
• Robinson, Alan, Instabilities in Contemporary British Poetry, Macmillan, 1988. ISBN 0333467698.