Guest-edited by Jonathan Davidson and Jackie Wills, The North 52 is the biggest issue ever, running to 140 pages bursting with poems, reviews, features and new approaches to poetry. For instance, a Business Writer of the Year writes about the economics of poetry publishing, while elsewhere visual artists take a look at poems from their own perspective.
The usual much-loved features such as Poets I Go Back To and Blind Criticism are there (by Susan Wicks and Mahendra Solanka and by Catherine Smith and Gregory Leadbetter) and there is Patience Agbabi and Ros Barber in sparkling conversation. Reviews of the most interesting new and recent books include of Vona Groarke, Jen Hadfield, Michael Hulse, Jean Srackland, Sinead Morrissey, Jenny Lewis, Helen Mort, Lorna Goodison; and also to the fore is the best poetry in translation.
And most importantly issue 52 has 92 poets chosen by our two guest editors -- established and new to print and inbetween, including Alison Brackenbury Peter Didsbury, Carrie Etter, Owen Gallagher and Connie Bensley, as well as poems from the 2013/14 Poetry Business Competition Winners, judged by Carol Ann Duffy: James Caruth, Rebecca Farmer, Holly Hopkins and Ben Wilkinson.