The January-February 2013 issue of Quadrant contains four of Andrew’s poems: “Sand-Bathing”, “Perceptions” and “Everlastings” and “Blues”.
New poetry collection by Shane McCauley
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: http://andrewlansdown.com/fellow-writers/shane-mccauley/
New poetry collection by Hal Colebatch
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: http://andrewlansdown.com/fellow-writers/hal-colebatch/
Allsorts wins Caleb Prize
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]
4 Poems in Quadrant
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
Reading at Perth Poetry Club
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/
3 Poems in Quadrant
Quadrant magazine has published three of Andrew’s poems in its November 2012 issue – “The Solace of the Stilt”, “Sand-Bathing” and “Perceptions”.
Lisa Gorton’s introduction to Andrew’s poems
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.
New Peter Kocan poem on Andrew’s website
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.
Recent review of Fontanelle
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