Selectors’ Comments
David Ashbee: Here are some of the factors that influenced my initial choice of “possible” or “not...”
Free verse that had some internal rhyme, and references to precise places, these met with a favourable response.
Long poems, especially those without stanza breaks, rarely sustained my interest. Some poems lacked a sense of development or ending, and those with lots of 3- or 4-word lines lacked fluency or rhythm.
Strident expressions of opinion, period nostalgia, or openly displayed grief or sympathy generally failed by lack of subtlety or nuance. Abstract words can sap a poem’s energy, but I was pleased to find a surprising absence of clichĂ© and archaisms (such as inversions) in the whole submission.
Both Sheila and I deplored a minority whose MSS were shoddy: faint copies, half-sheets, and even a web-page printout with biro deletions. These factors did not rule the poems out automatically but they were straws in the wind.
Finally, if you were successful, your work was in the top 12% of a large and largely respectable body, so congratulations !
Sheila Simmons: The prospect of sharing the selection process for a poetry magazine seemed an exciting challenge, but the sheer number of poems that arrived was quite a shock! I began to feel a new respect and admiration for the editors of poetry magazines...
Despite the time it involved - at least two readings of the poems, and a lot of final refreshing of the memory - it was a rewarding task, giving me the chance to see what other poets are writing about and consider what really works in a poem. The high spots for me were, every now and then, coming across three poems with the same submission number, all of which made my neck hairs prickle in the authentic manner. Whose voice was that, I wondered, that so excited me?
I’m sure it was a good thing to have a man and a woman sharing the selection. Dave and I know each other’s blind spots, and each of us selected a few poems the other didn’t think too much of! Luckily, we were in agreement about most of our fifty plus choices. We tried to be fair, both of us re-reading poems we were dubious about and discussing them, but personal choice came into it too.
I look forward to seeing our choices in print in the next edition of SOUTH.
Page(s) 18
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The