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.
.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:
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. …
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
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© 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.
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© 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.
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© 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.
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© Andrew Lansdown