It would be inappropriate for me to review South 54 having been one of the two from the literary hothouse that is Copnor, Portsmouth, but it looks to me a good issue and it would surely be inexcusable if it didn't.We always expect and get a superb photograph on the cover and here is the slipway on the Hard looking across to the glories of Gosport.
The fact that the magazine always seems so cramped for space, with its 300 word reviews and succinct prose is due to its generous allocation of pages to the featured poet and in this instance a particularly memorable, and personal, introduction to them, and also the understandable priority given to including as many poems as is possible.
I'm glad to see that the Selectors' comments, which we are invited to provide, look okay and not, as one worries that they might, not quite as good once seen in print. They may or may not provoke some discussion, having said that we weren't prepared to say what is 'good poetry' and what wasn't. Richard Williams and I arrived at a selection without very much disagreement but that is not to say that there weren't any number of other poems that could just as easily have been picked ahead of some that got in. It's not like a running race or a time trial in which a stopwatch can objectively confirm who was fastest, it's not like that at all. We know that Usain Bolt has been the fastest runner on the planet for several years now but it's less easy to establish who is the best poet. Different selectors would inevitably have chosen a different set of poems from those available, and so might we have done on another day.
Two poems go forward to be considered for the Forward Anthology of Best Poems of the year and we wish them well in that more competitive company.
Being a selector is a relatively easy job. You only have to do what you think is for the best. Editing and producing such a magazine is much more technical and difficult and, having had some insight into the process of how South goes about its business, I am the more impressed by what they do.
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