Outside the Blue Hebium is Geoff Hattersley's first publication since the celebrated New & Selected Poems (Smith/Doorstop, 2006). Funny and hard-hitting as always, Hattersley's poems are bulletins from the front-line of working life (and life without work) – realistic, surreal, grim and hilarious.
"A powerful and uncompromising poet."
Ian McMillan
'You Don’t Dream At All If You Can Help It'
It’s tough for a spoilt kid in a cold world
and you’re grateful you were never that kid
but still the world is tough, the world is tough.
Banks and charities and castles and locks –
stuff that makes no sense everywhere you look.
You feel like you’ve been to the moon and back
only for some nitwits to convince folk
you were fooling around in a desert.
If you’re lucky you’ll make it to sixty,
you already like playing the old man.
You try hard not to think of the future,
a place where kids play games with human bones.
Geoff Hattersley was born in South Yorkshire in 1956. His many previous collections of poetry include Port of Entry (1989) and Back of Beyond (Smith Doorstop, 2006). He is an experienced reader of his poetry and has performed and recorded musical arrangements of his poems. He edited The Wide Skirt Press from 1986 until 1998. He is currently Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at Huddersfield University.