“A Martian Sends a Postcard Home [With Commentary]”, Craig Raine, John Welford2016-03-17 (poetry)⁠:

Craig Raine is a British poet, born in 1944, who is known as an exponent of “Martian poetry”, by which is meant the expression of familiar concepts in unfamiliar ways. The term derived from his poem “A Martian Sends a Postcard Home”, which was first published in the New Statesman in 1977.

One does not need to believe in Martians to enjoy this poem, only in the concept of being able to perceive human behavior and institutions with complete detachment, as though one had never come across them before. Or rather, as Craig Raine does, to express one’s impressions of humanity in terms that seem strange and puzzling at first and need a little working out before one realises what it is to which the poet is referring. It is in working out the puzzles that the reader derives a lot of fun from this poem.