Who is Craig Raine?

 Craig Anthony Raine, was born on December 3,

1944.
 Along with Christopher Reid, he is the best-
known exponent of Martian poetry.
 Raine was born in Bishop Auckland, County
Durham, the son of Norman Edward and Olive
Marie Raine.
 He grew up in a "bookless" prefab in Shildon, a
town near Bishop Auckland.
 He won a scholarship to Barnard Castle School,
which was then a direct grant school where he
lived as a boarder.
 Craig Raine was educated at Oxford.
 He is a poet, a novelist and recently
the poetry editor of Faber and Faber,
and an academic at New College,
Oxford, since 1991 to 2010 where he
is now an Emeritus Professor.
 He is the founder and editor of the
literary magazine Arete since 1999.
 His first collection of poetry was
published in 1978, and he has gone to
produce eleven collections, in addition
to two novels and some literary
critisicisms.
About the poem
 This poem seeks to describe human
behaviour and objects as if they are
being seen for the first time by a visiting
Martian. Consequently, the tone is
detached and objective, but also
inquisitive. The ordinary and common
place are illuminated by a fresh
perspective in thirty-four unrhymed
couplets. While the poem is almost like a
series of riddles that invite the reader
to decipher them, the use of language is
original and evocative.
Guide Questions:

1. What is the

first object that
the Martian is
able to describe?
 It’s a BOOK. It was compared into a
Caxton, the first English printer.
Mechanical bird with wings refers
to the pages of the book.
2.What two
forms of
weather are
mentioned in
the poem?
 Thetwo forms of weather that
was mentioned in the poem are
CLOUDY AND SNOWY.
3.How does
the Martian
described the
forms of
weather?
 Raine used metaphor in describing the
weather. For instance, In the line “Rain is
when the earth is television”, he means
that the television is snowy. This is also a
very good metaphor for rain because it
made the television looked like it is
raining.
4.What
other objects
are described
by the
Martian?
 The objects described in the poem
are: BOOK, WEATHER, CAR (Model
T), KEY, WATCH or CLOCK,
TELEPHONE, BATHROOM,
SLEEPING and DREAMING.
5.How different
does the Martian
see the pictures?
Cite some lines
from the text to
prove your answer.
 The Martian sees the objects in a
Very EXTRAORDINARY way. He
sees it the way he describes it. For
instance, in the line “ In homes, a
haunted apparatus sleeps that
snores when you pick it up”, the
haunted apparatus that was being
described was a telephone. The
only clue given there was it is some
kind of apparatus at home and you
need to analyze it deeper to
understand further.
Additional Explanation:
 At first, the title of this poem was
kind of tricky because it made us
think that it was about an actual
Martian. But he was talking about
things that happen in everyday life
in earth. Basically something a
Martian would send home if he was
on a vacation to earth is what the
poem focuses on.
 Raine uses several riddles in this
poem to show what the Martian sees
when he comes to earth and he did a
very good job in doing this.
 The markings in the first stanza
means that if a person enjoys
reading a book they will treasure it.
 Book was also referred in the next
four stanzas.
 The sixth stanzas refers to the
weather.
 The seventh and eighth stanzas are talking
about a car. This is simple as Raine refers
to \"Model T.\" Raine gives good examples
of the car in Martian’s eyes. For instance,
\"Model T is a room with the locks
inside.\" I like this line a lot because I have
never seen a car in this way before. Raine
says it is a room because if you go inside
the car, you feel you’re away from the
outside world.You need a key to turn the
car on and off and to lock the car.
 In the next stanza, Raine did a great job of
describing a watch or clock. \"Ticking with
impatience\" is right of the button. That is
all a watch and clock do is tick for twenty
four hours a day.
 Stanza ten, eleven, and twelve are on the
subject of a telephone. All the phone is what
Raine writes in this poem. It does not do
anything until you pick it up and that is what
Raine is saying. The cries of the ghost is
when it rings. Then you \"talk to it\", or
answer it and when you are finished \"put it
back to sleep\" or hang it up. Yes, we do
\"deliberately wake it and tickle it with a
finger\" when we answer it or call someone
else.
 A \"punishment room with just
water\" is a bathroom. I just love
these next three stanzas because I
love the bathroom. I just don�t
think of it as a \"punishment room.\"
When Raine writes \"only the young
are allowed to suffer openly\" he is
talking about a baby getting their
diapers changed in the open. Yet
adults have to go to the bathroom
and suffer our pain alone. Raine had
exceptional use of metaphors to
describe the bathroom.
 The last two stanzas are about
sleeping and dreaming. \"When
the colours die\" is when we go
to bed. \"Reading about
ourselves with our eyelids
shut\" is basically saying we are
dreaming of ourselves. Raine put
this at a good spot in the poem
because the end of the poem
symbolizes the end of the day.