Poetry Ireland Review, published in Dublin by Poetry Ireland Ltd/Éigse Éireann Teo, the national organisation for poetry in Ireland, has included four of Andrew’s poems in its 112th issue. The poems are “Sehnsucht”, “Measure”, “Path” and “Man of Sorrows”. The editor, John F Deane, requested the poems from Andrew for a special issue of Poetry Island Review on the theme, “Name and Nature: ‘Who do you say that I am?'”
Last year Inkerman and Blunt published Australian Love Poems 2013, edited by Mark Tredinnick. The anthology proved to be very popular and the initial print run sold out within six months of its release.
Inkerman and Blunt has reprinted the collection with a few minor alterations, and with a “new” title, Australian Love Poems. (No, it’s not exactly the same title – the year, 2013, has been removed.)
Andrew’s poem, “Afterphase”, is in both editions, and is reproduced below:
Afterphase
for Susan
In the loll and lull
of love’s afterphase
her face is flushed,
her hair is mussed and
her mouth is curved
in shy contentment,
signalling her heart
shares her body’s
softness towards me.
© Andrew Lansdown
Studio journal has published five of Andrew’s poems in its 2014 autumn issue (no. 131). The poems are “South”, “Us2”, “Jizo Stones by the Three-Storeyed Pagoda”, “The Unheard Stags” and “Reading at Lunchtime”.
The Canberra Times newspaper published Andrew’s poem “Parting Petals” on 22 March 2014. The poem, a gunsaku consisting of five haiku, is reproduced below:
Parting Petals
Kyoto Spring
i
A light breeze is all
it takes to remind cherries
they’re ephemeral.
ii
Almost as frail,
the cherry’s pinkish petals,
as they are pale.
iii
More cherry petals
detaching from their sepals
beside the temples.
iv
So the blossom goes
and for a time the cherries
sorrow without clothes.
v
We saw you start—
now, cherries, like your blossom
we too must part.
© Andrew Lansdown
The March 2014 issue of Quadrant magazine contains five poems from Andrew: “Frog Cacophonies”, “Kyoto Blossoms”, “The Unheard Stags”, “Faces”, “Jizo Stones by the Three-Storeyed Pagoda”.
With the exception of “Frog Cacophonies”, these poem were written about and after Andrew’s stay (with his wife, Susan) in Kyoto in March-April 2013.
“Jizo Stones by the Three-Storeyed Pagoda” touches on the sorrow experienced by many Japanese women after abortion, sorrow they express in devotion to Jizo, a Buddhist bodhisattva who they believe will help the souls of their lost children (mizuko) to escape from the purgatory of Sai-no-Kawara.
The poem, along with a photograph of the Jizo statuettes, is offered below:
.
Jizo Stones by the Three Storied Pagoda
Kōfuku-ji, Nara
Treading softly the deer
graze among the Jizo stones
where mothers shed a tear
for their aborted children
and try to stem their fear
that the children suffer there
the hell they suffered here.
© Andrew Lansdown, 2013
Eight of Andrew’s poems have been included in a new bilingual anthology for children, When the Moon Is Swimming Naked: Australasian Poetry for the Chinese Youngster, edited by Kit Kelen and Mark Carthew for ASM Poetry/ Association of Stories in Macao.
The poems, which are published in English and Chinese, are “Grandma and the Mouses”, “Limerick on a Long Nose”, “The Elephant Who Lost His Tail”, “A Remembrance of Robins”, “Arum Lilies”, “Mosquito Haiku”, “Stars and Moon” and “In Line”.
All eight poems have been republished from Andrew’s book, Allsorts: poetry tricks and treats, and the first three can be read on this website here.
ABC Radio National broadcasts a weekly program on poetry titled Poetica.
In February Poetica produced a program on New Australian Love Poetry, drawing poems from the recently published Inkerman & Blunt anthology Australian Love Poems 2013.
Andrew’s poem “Afterphase” was one of the poems chosen from the anthology for inclusion in the Poetica program.
Poetica: New Australian Love Poetry was broadcast on Saturday 15 February and was repeated on Thursday 20 February 2014.
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The Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre invited Andrew to judge the Karen W Treanor Poetry Awards late last year (2013) and he delivered his Judge’s Report with the announcement of the winners at a ceremony at the KSP Writers Centre in December.
(The photograph, courtesy Susan Lansdown, shows poet Roland Leach receiving his award, with Andrew in the background.)
Andrew’s report, which contains pertinent observations about poetic standards and the judging process, is reproduced below:
by Andrew Lansdown
I wish to thank the good folk of the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre for inviting me to judge this year’s Karen W Treanor Poetry Awards. I count it an honour that the Centre has entrusted me with this task for a second time in five years.
The poems submitted to this year’s Awards were wide-ranging in subject, theme, mood and setting. As one might expect concerning entries in a literary award, the entered poems varied widely in competence and quality. Yet I am pleased to say that the overall standard of the entries was good, and I commend all the poets for their work and for their willingness to have it judged according to literary standards.
By way of explanation concerning my selection of the winning poems, and in the hope of helping entrants to have confidence in the judging process—and indeed, in the hope of helping people generally to see the legitimacy of literary awards such as this one—I want to make a comment here about my choice of the winning entries.
It may surprise entrants to know that there isn’t much subjectivity involved in honestly judging a literary competition. There are objective standards of literary excellence against which every poem can be judged. One such universally acknowledge standard, for example, is that cliches are “bad” and have no place in “good” poetry. (Two exceptions to this standard are: firstly, humorous poetry where cliche is knowingly use to get a laugh or, secondly, narrative poetry where cliche is knowingly used to profile a person as someone who is shallow and/or conformist. But both these exceptions depend for their impact on the fact that they are exceptions to an accepted objective standard and that not only the writer but also the reader understands this.) Another universally acknowledge standard is that metaphors must involve both original and plausible comparisons—whether they are fanciful comparisons like the metaphysical conceits of John Donne or realistic comparisons like the imagist vignettes of T.E. Hulme. Poems can be objectively judged against the objective standards of literary excellence, and it is the task of the literary judge to do precisely that.
This does not mean, of course, that there is no subjectivity involved in the judging process. The poetry judge will have his or her own perspectives and preferences …
Axon: Creative Explorations has published one of Andrew’s poems, “Campfire Robins”, in its latest edition, Vol 3, No 2, October 2013.
Axon is a scholarly and non-commercial journal of creative practice and theory published under the auspices of the University of Canberra.
Andrew’s poem can be read on the Axon website here: http://www.axonjournal.com.au/issue-5/campfire-robins
One of Andrew’s poems has been published in the November 2013 issue of FreeXpresSion magazine. The editor selected the poem “Suddenly Gladdened” to accompany a favourable review of Gestures of Love: The Fatherhood Poems.