In 1978 and again in 1980 Christopher Reid shared with Craig Raine the Prudence Farmer Award, a poetry prize given each year for the best poem or poems to have appeared in the pages of the New Statesman during the previous twelve months. The coupling of the names was symptomatic: it has been somewhat difficult for Christopher Reid to be acknowledged and assessed as a poet in his own right, for the tendency among British critics has been to see him as little more than Craig Raine's righthand man in the Martian school. There is some reason for viewing these poets in tandem, not least their shared Oxford background and publisher, and there is also justice in considering Reid the less substantial talent, but it is evident too that Christopher Reid's poetry has characteristics and strengths which are distinctly his own.

Christopher John Reid was born in Hong Kong, the...