Term used to describe the work of poets such as Craig Raine and Christopher Reid. It originated from Raine's 1979 collection A Martian Sends a Postcard Home. Martian poetry frequently describes everyday objects from unusual angles by using inventive metaphor and simile. For example, in Raine's poem A Walk in the Country a sewage farm is described as being 'like a tape-recorder, whose black spools turn night and day'.