Andrew’s friend, Shane McCauley, has published a new collection of poetry, titled Ghost Catcher. The collection has been published by Studio magazine, which has given its entire 125th edition to showcase Shane’s poetry.

Here is one of Shane’s beautifully realised poems from Ghost Catcher:

Wind-Spooked

 

Startled mid-stride

by this icy gust

the returning cat

black-arrows through

tunnel of its sudden fear

is chased along

the leaf scattered path

of inelegant anxiety

scoots past reaching branches

and all the claws

hidden in the hunting cold

until escapes scurry

in the brain and it

unhurriedly sloughs off

the moment

and steps calmly

from the rain.

            © Shane McCauley

Shane McCauley’s work is featured in the FELLOW WRITERS pages of Andrew’s website. Read more of his work here: https://andrewlansdown.com/fellow-writers/shane-mccauley/

Andrew’s friend, Hal Colebatch, has published a new collection of poetry, The Age of Revolution. Consisting of 20 poems, the 16 page chapbook is part of Picaro Press’s Wagtail series.

The publisher claims that “a major objective of the [Wagtail] series is to keep enough good work in print for readers to form a considered opinion of each poet’s voice and style”. Certainly, The Age of Revolution offers a fine sampling of Colebatch’s poetic voice and style.

Copies of The Age of Revolution can be purchased for $4.00 from Picaro Press here: http://www.picaropress.com/

Read a poem (“Photograph of a Bristol University Ceremony, 1941″) from The Age of Revolution on this website here: https://andrewlansdown.com/fellow-writers/hal-colebatch/

Andrew has won the Caleb Prize for Poetry for the second year in a row.

He has been awarded the 2012 Prize for his book, Allsorts: Poetry Tricks and Treats.

Andrew was joint winner of the Caleb Prize for Poetry in 2011 for his book, Far from Home.

In her review of Allsorts on behalf of the Caleb Prize organisers, Omega Writers, Dale Harcombe states:

This book is aptly named as it contains all sorts of sweet delights. If you are a teacher feeling a bit lost about teaching poetry in class, or just someone who wants to learn more about the craft of poetry, you will find this book an invaluable tool.

Not only is Andrew Lansdown one of Australia’s best imagist poets, but included in the book are some personal observations about poetry, the best way to write a limerick, where ideas come from and ideas for writing poems as well as outlining different ways of writing e.g. quatrain, haiku, rhymed poem, sonnet or tanka.

Andrew explains techniques such as assonant rhyme, couplets, and alternating rhyme … [CLICK HERE TO READ ON]

The December 2012 issue of Quadrant magazine contains four of Andrew’s poems: “South”, “Away from Canada”, “Cynosure” and “Foul Play”. While all four poems can be read online only by Quadrant subscribers, the poem “South”, concerning the poet’s stay in the United States of America late last year, is reprinted below:

South

 

This is America and I don’t know

the birds or their migrations.

 

But I recognise this little gaggle,

this travelling trio, of Canada geese

 

grazing on the grass verge

of the hurtling eight-lane highway.

 

Such an unlikely place! Yet

they will not stay on the outskirts

 

of Chicago for long—they are

charting their way south for winter.

 

South—the same direction

as my home, the direction always

 

pulling at the loadstone of my heart.

                    © Andrew Lansdown

Andrew read at the Perth Poetry Club today (Saturday, 24th November). He was one of two invited readers and he read poems from his collections Far From Home and Two Poets.

Perth Poetry Club meets every Saturday afternoon at the Moon Café in Northbridge. More details here: http://perthpoetryclub.com/

Quadrant magazine has published three of Andrew’s poems in its November 2012 issue – “The Solace of the Stilt”, “Sand-Bathing” and “Perceptions”.

Australian poet and critic Lisa Gorton wrote the introducion to the Two Poets, a 228-page book published in 2011 by Fremantle Press to showcase the work of poets Andrew Lansdown and Kevin Gillam. The first half of Lisa’s introduction focuses on Andrew’s work and begins:

Here are two markedly different Western Australian poets. Both pay attention to small facts of nature. Both treat poetry as a work of intimacy, not performance. In tone, both poets are closer to the voice of the diary than of the cafe or pub. Even when they deal, as they often do, with suburban domestic life, their poems mark out a place of inwardness. Yet their collections reflect and create different imaginative worlds. In particular, these two poets relate differently to time: Lansdown’s poems work to distil and preserve a single moment, whereas Gillam’s work to capture the moment-by-moment experience of time. Intriguingly, their writing habits reflect this difference. Lansdown works in a study, seated at a window, looking out. Gillam gets ideas for poems walking the back lanes around where he lives. This difference could be said to define the nature of each poet’s achievement.

Lansdown engages consistently, though by no means exclusively, with the austere Japanese tradition. Almost all his collections include haiku or tanka sequences: short poems in syllabic verse that capture a single observation in exact and simple words. As one of Lansdown’s poems puts it, ‘Haiku are pebbles/ poets lob into the pond/ of our emotions’. Lansdown brings that understated discipline to his descriptions of the Australian landscape. …

Read the rest of Lisa’s comments about Andrew’s collection, The Colour of Life, in Two Poets here.

Two Poets retails for $24.95 and can be purchased from Fremantle Press here or from Penguin Books Australia here.

Les Murray’s recent anthology, The Quadrant Book of Poetry, contains many fine poems, including one by Peter Kocan about Dylan Thomas and his wife, Caitlin. Read Peter’s poem, “Dylan & Caitlin” in the Favourite Poems section of Andrew’s website, here.

Review of Fontanelle

by Dale Harcombe

To my mind Australia’s finest poet. No-one handles imagery as deftly. I read Boat one of the poems from this collection and my favourite poem of many of his, to my writing group the other Saturday. Listening to it produced some interesting poems of our own. Lansdown’s poems are the ones I go back to repeatedly and reread. They remind me what poetry is.

goodreads.com, 20 June 2012

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/352336294

Several of Andrew’s poems have been included in the latest issue of Axon journal – a series of four tanka under the title “Birds, Perching” and another tanka titled “Absence”.

Axon is a scholarly and non-commercial journal of creative practice and theory published under the auspices of the University of Canberra.

Andrew’s poems can be read on the Axon website here: http://www.axonjournal.com.au/issue-3/birds-perching-and-absence

The first print run of Andrew’s poetry collection for children and young people, Allsorts: poetry tricks and treats, was sold out earlier this year. Wombat Books has now reprinted the book, which can be ordered through this website or from Wombat Books or from bookshops.

The reprinted edition of Allsorts contains some minor alterations to the text and half a dozen new illustrations by Susan Lansdown, Andrew’s wife.

For a short time, Allsorts is available through this website post free, a saving of over $6.00. If you would like to purchase a copy of Allsorts for $24.95 email contactandrew[at]andrewlansdown[dot]com.

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The website Good Reads recently posted a review of Two Poets by Annerliegh Pappos. Concerning Andrew’s contribution, she writes:

I love the first half of this book. Lansdown is an interesting poet. Totally unashamed of using the exclamation mark and it works for him mostly. His poems about childbirth and his growing child,  and the relationship between this and mental health are sublime. Totally human, never gratuitous.

The poem ‘Heat: After the third day of Desert Storm’ is stark perfection. The images are so vivid whilst using plain language.

Possibly my only criticism is the overly-lamenting style of some pieces. It can be a little on the bush ballad side for me.

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/386620319

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Quadrant magazine recently published a highly favourable review of Andrew’s 278 page poetry collection for children and young people, Allsorts: poetry treats and tricks (Wombat Books, 2011). Written by Hal G.P. Colebatch, it reads:

What Poetry Is Really About

Andrew Lansdown, many of whose poems have appeared in Quadrant, has here compiled a large collection of his work, mainly shorter poems. It seems primarily intended to introduce children to poetry, but can also be read by adults with pleasure and profit.

“Pleasure and profit” is, in fact, an inadequate phrase. For much of the book is more profound than that: although a lot of the work is very simple, at its best it opens windows onto the transcendent.

Since he began writing in the early 1970s and despite suffering from several disadvantages, including being a West Australian and outside the Sydney and Melbourne poetic cliques, as well as being a professing Christian—indeed a pastor—Andrew Lansdown has acquired an impressive record of poetry publications as well as a number of best-selling children’s novels in the “Dragonfox” [Chronicles of Klarin] series.

While the poems are written in a great variety of styles, a large number are about the natural world—birds are a very frequent subject—and a Japanese influence can be seen in the spare descriptiveness of the writing. …

[READ THE REST OF THE REVIEW HERE]

Andrew’s poem “Who Gives This Woman” has been published in the latest edition of the beautifully produced, book-style magazine Famous Reporter (# 43, June 2012).

(For those who have access to the magazine, note that there is an error at the end of the fourth line of the second stanza: the word “fear” should in fact be “feel”.)

The West Australian newspaper has published a short review of Andrew’s book Allsorts: poetry tricks and treats. Written by writingWA, the review reads:

Allsorts offers all sorts of poetic treats, for adults and children, including haikus, limericks, short and longer poems in a variety of forms, all in Lansdown’s inimitable style; often amusing and always celebratory of the natural world. There are delightful black and white illustrations by Susan  Lansdown and a major final section including a q and a where Lansdown discusses his ‘poetry ideas’, and a list of definitions of poetic techniques and forms. As an introduction to the pleasures as well as the discipline of reading and writing poetry for young and older readers this book could not be bettered.

The West Australian, Books, 31 May 2011

The review is also published on the writingWA website at: http://www.writingwa.org/booksreviewed/2011-reviews/

Earlier this year, the online journal Creatrix invited Andrew to submit several haiku for inclusion in a special “invitation only” section. Those haiku – three of them – have now been published in Creatrix, issue 17, June 2012.

One of Andrew’s haiku in Creatrix #17 is:

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Café verandah—

a housefly kamikazes

my cappuccino

        © Andrew Lansdown

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To read Andrew’s other two haiku, go to the Creatrix website: http://creatrix.wapoets.net.au/2012/06/issue-17-haiku/ and scroll down to the section headed “The following haiku are by special invitation from renowned national and international haikuists”.

The esteemed Australian poet and anthologist Les Murray has compiled a collection of the best poems published in Quadrant magazine in the last ten years.

Les Murray has included 12 of Andrew’s poems in the anthology, which is titled The Quadrant Book of Poetry 2001 – 2010 (ISBN 9780980677867).

“It has been known for decades”, Les Murray writes in his introduction to this collection, “that poets who might fear relegation or professional sabotage from the critical consensus of our culture have a welcome and a refuge in Quadrant—but only if they write well.”

From the second decade of his twenty years as literary editor of Quadrant, Les Murray here presents a selection of the best verse he published between 2001 and 2010.

It is a prodigious body of work: 487 poems by 169 authors.

These days, Murray observes, when poetic values are increasingly being seen as real enrichment, readers are turning to the few journals that nurture them:

“At a time of such turn-about in the life of magazines, a Quadrant anthology seems well overdue.”

Andrew’s poems in The Quadrant Book of Poetry 2001-2010 are: “Two Pictures of Hurt”, “After Pain”, “Dandelion Haiku”, “Distress”, “Wrens in Wire”, “Freedom”, “The Sleep of the Upright”, “Caress”, “Hop”, “Flag”, “Sighting”, “After Death”.

The poem “Freedom”, which is also published in Andrew’s latest collection, The Colour of Life (in Two Poets with Kevin Gillam, Fremantle Press 2011) is reproduced below:

Freedom

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How foolishly I once thought of freedom.

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When my first son was small I sometimes

dreamed of the day I’d be independent

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of his demands. At times the chores

of fatherhood hung upon me like chains.

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Now he is gone, gone to university, gone

from home—and I am enslaved by loss.

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How foolishly I once thought of freedom.

        © Andrew Lansdown

Quadrant published Andrew’s poem “Women with Infants” in its January-February 2012 issue. The magazine also published Andrew’s poems “Seize the Day”, “Pink Tones” and “Stargazing” in its April 2012 issue. “Pink Tones” is reproduced below:

Pink Tones

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To the sporadic pull

of the air’s clear rope

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the hibiscus blossom

sways and swings

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but its pistil tongue

still cannot strike

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the wall of the bell,

which peals out

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not sound but colour.

        © Andrew Lansdown

The Canberra Times newspaper published two tanka by Andrew on 24 March 2012. Under the overarching heading “Outback Eagles”, the first tanka is titled “Prey”, while the second is titled “Poise”. The second is reproduced below:

2. Pose

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A wedgetail eagle

on a kangaroo carcass

beside the highway

strikes up a majestic pose

as if it had made the kill.

        © Andrew Lansdown

In February and March Andrew ran poetry workshops at two venues and read poetry at a third.

On 25th February he read a poem and discussed his book Two Poets (with Kevin Gillam) at the Perth Writers Festival breakfast organised by Fremantle Press and held at the Western Australian University.

On 10th March he ran an Advanced Poetry Workshop on “Alternative Poetic Forms” at the Peter Cowan Writers Centre.

On 23rd – 25th March he ran three workshops and participated in a discussion panel on “Poetry and Music” at the 2012 Storylines Festival of Children’s and Young Adults’ Literature at All Saints College.

The National Library of Australia has published two of Andrew’s poems – “At the Close of Summers to Come” and “Caterpillars” – in an anthology titled Little Book of Butterflies (ISBN 9780642277404).

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As stated in the blurb on the back cover, “Little Book of Butterflies, is a delightful blending of images of Australian butterflies, from the Librarys collections, with Australian poetry.  In the hands of artists such as Ellis Rowan, Harriet and Helena Scott, John Lewin and Charles McCubbin, the transience and beauty of these delicate creatures enliven the words of inspiration, hope and reflection by well-known poets including Judith Wright, Andrew Lansdown, Dorothy Shaw, Diane Fahey and Mudrooroo. A gorgeous showcase of butterfly illustrations and poetry, Little Book of Butterflies will appeal to all those searching for a perfect gift or a beautiful publication to savour for themselves.”

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The National Library of Australia has published poems by Andrew in two other anthologies: The Little Book of Trees and The Little Book of Cats, and has requested permission to use another of his poems in the forthcoming anthology, Little Book of Banksias.

Fremantle Press has just published a book of Brian Simmonds’ paintings of the Swan River. The painter has chosen two of Andrew’s poems to accompany two of his paintings.

We stand on the shore

and cast lines out from us. We

both wait for something

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unknown to bite, for the tug

at the line’s far-away end.

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        © Andrew Lansdown