Raine, Craig Anthony (1944– )

English poet. His first collection, The Onion, Memory (1978), established a characteristic method of attempting to ‘see’ familiar things in new and unusual ways, which he developed in even greater depth in the ‘alien’ viewpoint adopted in A Martian Sends A Postcard Home (1979). Recent works include History: The Home Movie (1994).

His collections include A Journey to Greece (1979); Rich (1984), including a prose memoir of his childhood ‘A Silver Plate’; and a collection of essays, Haydn and the Valve Trumpet (1990). 1953 (1990) was a version of Racine's drama Andromaque.

Raine was born in Bishop Auckland, County Durham. He was educated at Oxford where he has spent most of his life, apart from a short spell as poetry editor for Faber in 1981. He became a fellow of New College, Oxford in 1991.