Craig Raine
Encyclopedia
Craig Raine is an English poet and critic born in Bishop Auckland
Bishop Auckland
Bishop Auckland is a market town and civil parish in County Durham in north east England. It is located about northwest of Darlington and southwest of Durham at the confluence of the River Wear with its tributary the River Gaunless...

, County Durham
County Durham
County Durham is a ceremonial county and unitary district in north east England. The county town is Durham. The largest settlement in the ceremonial county is the town of Darlington...

, England. Along with 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...

, he is the best-known exponent of Martian poetry
Martian poetry
Martian poetry was a minor movement in British poetry in the late 1970s and early 1980s. 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,...

.

Life

His father was a boxer who fought for England twice. He grew up in a "bookless" prefab in Shildon
Shildon
Shildon is a town in County Durham, in England. It is situated 2 miles to the south east of Bishop Auckland and 11 miles north of Darlington. It is 13 miles away from Durham, 23 miles from Sunderland and 23 miles from Newcastle-upon-Tyne...

, near Bishop Auckland, County Durham. He won a scholarship to the independent Barnard Castle School
Barnard Castle School
Barnard Castle School , is a co-educational independent day and boarding school situated in the market town of Barnard Castle, in the North East of England. It was founded in 1883 as the North Eastern County School, with the name changed to the current one in 1924, and to this day is generally...

. Of his time there he has recalled that it seemed that everyone else's parents seemed to be:
accountants or surgeons or something. I couldn't say my father was an ex-boxer who did faith healing, had epileptic fits and lived off a pension. So for a while I said he was a football manager. But by the end I was inviting my friends home and they thought he was just as terrific as I did.


Raine has commented on his education: "At Barnard Castle I was taught by an absolutely remarkable English teacher, Arnold Snodgrass, a friend of WH Auden at Oxford [and later Robert Graves
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...

]. There was no question that he altered my mindset on things and made me very critical."

Raine received his university education at Exeter College
Exeter College, Oxford
Exeter College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England and the fourth oldest college of the University. The main entrance is on the east side of Turl Street...

, University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

, where he was:
thrilled by beer at one and threepence a pint, the sexual revolution was good and I was obsessed with literature.


He taught at Oxford and followed a literary career as book editor for New Review, editor of Quarto, and poetry editor at 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....

. He became poetry editor at publishers Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. Faber has a rich tradition of publishing a wide range of fiction, non fiction, drama, film and music...

 in 1981, and has been a fellow of New College, Oxford
New College, Oxford
New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.- Overview :The College's official name, College of St Mary, is the same as that of the older Oriel College; hence, it has been referred to as the "New College of St Mary", and is now almost always...

 since 1991, retiring from his post as tutor in June 2010.

He is married to Ann Pasternak Slater
Ann Pasternak Slater
Ann Pasternak Slater is a literary scholar and translator who was formerly a Fellow and Tutor at St. Anne's College, Oxford.She has written and lectured on her uncle Boris Pasternak's translations into Russian of Shakespeare plays...

, a retired fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. Craig Raine is founder and editor of the literary magazine Areté
Areté
Areté is an arts magazine, published three times a year, edited by the poet Craig Raine. The magazine aims to give detailed coverage of theatre, fiction, and poetry, while also serving as a platform for new writing in all genres....

and a frequent contributor. His daughter Nina Raine
Nina Raine
Nina Raine is an English theatre director and playwright, and the only daughter of the poet Craig Raine.She graduated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1998 with a First in English Literature.-Career:...

 is a director and playwright and his son Moses is a playwright.

His works include a number of poetry collections : The Onion, Memory (1978), A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (1979), A Free Translation (1981), Rich (1984), History: The Home Movie (1994), and Clay. Whereabouts Unknown (1996). His reviews and essays are collected in two anthologies: Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...

 and the Valve Trumpet
(1990) and In Defence of T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

(2000). A short critical-biographical study of Eliot, T. S. Eliot: Image, Text and Context, was published in 2007.

Poetry Collections

  • The Onion, Memory, Oxford University Press
    Oxford University Press
    Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...

    , 1978. ISBN 0192118773.
  • A Journey to Greece, Sycamore Press, 1979
  • A Martian Sends a Postcard Home, Oxford University Press, 1979. ISBN 019211896X.
  • A Free Translation, Salamander, 1981
  • Rich, Faber and Faber
    Faber and Faber
    Faber and Faber Limited, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. Faber has a rich tradition of publishing a wide range of fiction, non fiction, drama, film and music...

    , 1984
  • History: The Home Movie, Penguin
    Penguin Books
    Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...

    , 1994
  • Change, Prospero Poets, 1995
  • Clay: Whereabouts Unknown, Penguin, 1996
  • Collected Poems 1978-1999, Picador
    Picador (imprint)
    Picador is an imprint of Pan Macmillan in the United Kingdom and Australia and of Macmillan Publishing in the United States. Both companies are owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group....

    , 1999
  • A la recherche du temps perdu, Picador, 2000
  • How Snow Falls, 2010

Libretto

  • The Electrification of the Soviet Union, Faber and Faber, 1986, opera
    Opera
    Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

     by Nigel Osborne
    Nigel Osborne
    Nigel Osborne MBE, FRCM is a British composer.He serves as Reid Professor of music at the University of Edinburgh and has been teaching at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover.He studied composition with Kenneth Leighton ,...

  • Atonement, opera based on Ian McEwan's novel
    Atonement (novel)
    Atonement is a 2001 novel by British author Ian McEwan.On a fateful day, a young girl makes a terrible mistake that has life-changing effects for many people...

    , music by Michael Berkeley
    Michael Berkeley
    Michael Berkeley is a British composer and broadcaster on music.-Early life:His father was the composer Sir Lennox Berkeley...

    , 2013

Criticism

  • Haydn and the Valve Trumpet, Faber and Faber, 1990
  • In Defence of T. S. Eliot, Picador, 2000
  • T. S. Eliot: Image, Text and Context, Oxford University Press, 2007

As editor

  • A Choice of Kipling's Prose, Faber and Faber, 1987
  • Rudyard Kipling: Selected Poems, Penguin, 1992
  • New Writing 7, (co-editor) Vintage
    Vintage Books
    Vintage Books is a publishing imprint founded in 1954 by Alfred A. Knopf. Its publishing list includes world literature, fiction, and non-fiction...

    , 1998

External links

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