'On the buses' with Dostoyevsky - Geoff Hattersley

New York meets New Yorkshire in Geoff Hattersley's slyly funny poems. Their apparent simplicity belies a shrewd intelligence as much in tune with larger events as with the daily happenings which seem to form their subject. His poetic allegiances are mainly with contemporary American writers, but his territory is the human condition as seen from Yorkshire, as well as - in this new collection - the frontier society of a kibbutz in Israel. He is a poet of people, despairing but cheeky into the bargain, melancholic with a comic edge.