"Identity Theft" by Alec Taylor (Acumen, 2012)

At least some of these poems qualify as light verse, though the gloomier poems of Larkin and Tony Harrison haunt these works. "Penzance and Parnassus" is neat. "Much too much" is fun too - it begins "Much have I travelled in the realms of gloom -/ That is: I've shuffled slowly through the dark/ In labyrinths devised by Philip Larkin" and ends "My smiling Ariadne, Wendy Cope". "Kubla Can't" begins brightly with

In London Mister Mandelson A tacky pleasure-dome decreed, Which like a murky river ran Expenses measureless to man. A monument to greed

but doesn't quite live up to that promise. "Walking on Water" nearly works (the final "clutch at straws" is non-thematically rhyme driven). "In the Market" might better have been presented as a story. A page or so of mock McGonagall ("The Silvery Dart"), however good, may be too much.

Typos on p.26, I think : "hair" instead of "hare" and "rsults" instead of "results".