He's written two books of essays, a play, poems and the libretto for an opera. Next comes the novel, poet Graig Raine tells Steve Pratt.

IF HE didn't believe in coincidence before, Shildon-born poet Craig Raine did following a telephone call from Nigel Osborne.

The composer wanted to know if Raine would write the libretto for an opera he was planning, based on a novella by Russian writer Boris Pasternak.

"He said I probably wouldn't know it, but I told him that by a complete coincidence I'd taken the book off my shelf the previous day. I could see the book from where I was sitting talking to him. So the project had extraordinary signals from the beginning," says Raine.

His link with the novella extended further, as he's married to the niece of Pasternak, probably best known as the author of Dr Zhivago. Now a Fellow of New College, Oxford, Raine lives in the city with her and their four children.

That call came 15 years ago, leading to Osborne and Raine's The Electrification Of The Soviet Union being performed at Glyndebourne. Now the piece is being revived by Music Theatre Wales in a tour which comes in Newcastle this month. It marked Raine's first brush with writing for opera.

Before that Osborne had set his poems to music for the opening of a faculty building in Oxford. That began with a phone call too. "He rang me up one afternoon and asked if I'd mind him setting a couple of my poems to music, adding that I might not like the music. I said, 'Go ahead, take my consent as read'. Then I asked when the opening was so I could be there and he said, 'Tomorrow afternoon'."

That was the start of a fruitful collaboration, although Raine admits his musical knowledge was not extensive. "It was like writing a drama in verse form," he explains. "Usually, the words come before the music, unless you're doing an English translation of Italian opera when you have the music and have to make the words fit."

"This was a real collaboration. Nigel and I went to Glyndebourne for a week to hammer out the plot with the director Peter Sellars. Up to that point, I'd done a two-page treatment. One scene, which I thought would be 20 minutes, Sellars said would last 15 seconds. I thought, 'I'm resigning now'. But we worked it out."

Since then, he's worked with Osborne on another opera, Sarajevo. "I've always loved music. I enjoy working with composers and know more about it now," he says. "It gets you out of the house and meeting other people, so it's fun. And it's very glamorous, sometimes very irritating and also kind of wonderful if you go into the collaboration with the right spirit."

He's pleased that The Electrification Of The Soviet Union is being revived. Operas are expensive to mount, with a full orchestra a particular expense.

Osborne has produced a reduced score for the tour - "and rather miraculously it seems to have lost very little," says 57-year-old Raine.

The County Durham-born poet and critic's late father, Norman Raine, was a boxer who fought for England twice. His mother, he says, was very ambitious for her children. "She could see the value of education and wanted us to have the best possible education," he says. "I went to an ordinary elementary school in Shildon until I was 11, then went on a scholarship to Barnard Castle School and then to Oxford.

"At Barnard Castle I was taught by an absolutely remarkable English teacher, Arnold Snodgrass, a friend WH Auden at Oxford. There was no question that he altered my mindset on things and made me very critical. I remember when I was 11 or 12, we had a book to read in class, John Buchan's Prester John. He ridiculed it mercilessly and we all defended it because we thought it was exciting."

Raine's first poetry collection The Onion, Memory is acknowledged to have changed the landscape of contemporary British poetry. Together with his second, A Martian Sends A Postcard Home, it established him as the founder of what's been called the "Martian" school.

History: The Home Movie, an epic poem published in 1994, celebrated the history of his own family and that of his wife. Collected Poems 1978-1999 was published three years ago.

"I had two ambitions which seemed to be incompatible - to be a Don at Oxford and to write. I didn't see how I could do both of those, but seem to have wound up doing both," he says. "I've written two books of essays, a play, libretto, poems and I'm writing a novel. I've done more or less everything."

Any clues about the novel he's writing? "It's in prose. That's all I'm saying."

The Electrification Of The Soviet Union is performed by Music Theatre Wales at Newcastle Playhouse on Wednesday, at 7.30pm. Tickets: 0191-232 3366.,