Poet's poor sonnet about New York (8)
I believe the answer is:
tennyson
'poet's' is the definition.
(Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
'poor sonnet about new york' is the wordplay.
'poor' is an anagram indicator.
'about' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'new york' becomes 'ny'.
'sonnet' is an anagram of 'tenson'.
'tenson' going around 'ny' is 'TENNYSON'.
(Other definitions for tennyson that I've seen before include "Poet Laureate after Wordsworth" , "writer" , "Alfred, Lord -, nineteenth century Poet Laureate" , "Poet Laureate from 1850 to 1892" , "Poet, author of "The Lady of Shalott"" .)