Homecoming
Andrew Lansdown
Fremantle Arts Centre Press (Fremantle), 1979
ISBN 0-909144-22-2

 

 

 

Back cover blurb

Andrew Lansdown was born in Pingelly, Western Australia, in 1954. He began writing poetry in 1972, and submitted his first work for publication in 1974. Since then he has published nearly one hundred poems in approximately twenty literary journals in both Australia and New Zealand. He has also published short stories and critical essays in a number of journals. His poetry and short stories have been broadcast on the A.B.C., and he has won several poetry prizes.

Andrew has gained Arts degrees at both the Western Australian Institute of Technology and Murdoch University and has tutored at W.A.I.T. in Creative Writing. He currently teaches Leaving English at several evening Technical Schools and is writing booklets for the Education Department on aspects of traditional Aboriginal culture. He is married and has one son. 

                                                                                    

 

 

Three poems from Homecoming

 

Fishing

We stand on the shore
and cast out to the dark sea.
We wait for something
unknown to bite, for the tug
at the line’s faraway end.

            © Andrew Lansdown

 

 

On Poetry

As we sit talking
about poetry

my son (still months
from walking)

lounges without a care
on my knee, fronts

my old friend with
a vacant stare

spasmodically stops
our talking with

a short sigh
and lifts and drops

his foot rhythmically
on the flat of my thigh.

            © Andrew Lansdown

 

 

The Laughter and the Hammer

My older brother and his friend
told me it was real:
a small creature with a stick
in its fist and a drum strapped
to its belly. It walked
along the work-bench—I am not sure,
perhaps it stood still—beating
its drum. They said
it was a cricket. Jiminy!
they laughed
as they smashed it with a hammer.

For years afterwards
I kept a look out in the garden
knowing that only the sight of another
could atone for what I had seen.

Strange—even though I know
it was plastic, now—
how it still haunts me:
the cricket in its red tunic, like a soldier,
beating its drum;
the laughter and the hammer smashing down.

           © Andrew Lansdown