Tony Harrison is a poet who has written poems that sing, swing & kick. Poems that bite the hand that feeds him & then go for the arm. Not often, but enough that I might get curious as to what he's been up to lately. This year Penguin, celebrating 70 years as book publishers, have released 70 small paperbacks of approximately 60 pages each - one of those little books is Under the Clock by Tony Harrison. So what has he been up to lately? Nothing much good I must say. This is another batch of mostly rhymed, formal poetry with political themes. Iraq, of course, 9/11 of course, some private reminiscing he tries to give a wider appeal & so on & so forth. The main problem though, as I see it, is that this time, it doesn't sing, swing or kick. These poems sit down in the boat, they don't even nibble at a finger. This is the first book I've read by him which didn't produce a giggle, or a feeling that this I want to quote, or that. To put it bluntly: Penguin did not do Tony Harrison a service by accepting this book for publication