Picaro Press has published a collection of 48 tanka by Andrew Lansdown. The 28 page chapbook, titled Consolations, is available through this website for $3.60, postage included. Alternatively, it can be ordered through the publishers website at www.picaropress.com. To download an order form from this website, click here.
One of the merchants on Amazon.com is offering to sell a new copy of Andrew’s fantasy novel, With My Knife, for US $130.56. This website, along with many an Australian bookshop, offers to sell new copies of With My Knife for just AU $15.95!
Download an order form to purchase a copy of With My Knife for $15.95, plus postage.
Three new poems by Andrew have just been published in the July-August issue of Quadrant magazine. One of them, posted here, is a gunsaku (haiku sequence):
About Autumn
i
Liquidambar—
anticipating autumn
with a red leaf.
ii
Liquidambar—
the evergreens envy your
changing colours.
iii
Liquidambar—
educating evergreens
about autumn.
© Andrew Landown
Andrew has begun a FELLOW WRITERS’ page on his website in honour of various Australian writers who are among his friends and acquaintances. The first writer to be included is the poet and novelist, Hal Colebatch. Have a look. More writers to follow.
In 2007 the Australian Haiku Society appointed the haiku poet John Bird to conduct a survey of “haiku definitions” as used by haiku poets in Australia. John recently asked Andrew for his definition of haiku. Andrew offered two definitions, both of which were posted on the Australian Haiku Society’s website, HaikuOz, on 31 March 2009:
(1) “Haiku are poems modelled on the seventeen-syllable three-line poems of the ancient Japanese. Being poems, haiku are a form of literature and may employ literary techniques and may be judged by literary standards. Generally speaking, haiku stir emotion and stimulate reflection in the reader through simple precise objective depictions of things in nature.”
(2)
“Haiku are pebbles
poets lob into the pond
of our emotions.”© Andrew Lansdown
This second “definition” is a haiku taken from Andrew’s poetry collection, Waking and Always, which was republished last year by Picaro Press.
Read more haiku definitions on the Australian Haiku Society’s website at: http://www.haikuoz.org/
The March 2009 issue of Quadrant magazine contains 4 of Andrew’s poems, including the following choka (a traditional Japanese poetic form):
Western Yellow Robin
When the Almighty
spoke yellow-bellied robins
into bright being
and told them to multiply,
he already knew
I would observe this robin,
this gentle-grey bird
too shy to wear its colour
on its petite breast,
this yolk-yellow-under bird
drawn from the forest
by the feather-grey and -fine
smoke of my campfire—
and he also foreknew that
I would by virtue
of his implanted image
want to celebrate
and recreate this bird by
speaking it into a poem.
© Andrew Lansdown
The March 2009 issue of Quadrant magazine contains 4 of Andrew’s poems, including the following tanka (a traditional Japanese poetic form):
Sheep
Only three days since
they were shorn and already
their whiteness is gone.
Still, who of us has managed
even that long in this world?
© Andrew Lansdown
Amazon.com is now selling copies of Andrew’s short story collection, The Dispossessed. The book can be purchased for US$17.95. This is an economical price for readers in the United States. Go to: http://www.amazon.com/Dispossessed-Other-Stories-Andrew-Lansdown/dp/1876819308/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235820886&sr=1-7
The Dispossess can also be purchased from this website (which, given postage and dollar conversion rates, would be a cheaper option for readers in Australia). Click here to download an order form.
Omibus Books/Scholastic Australia has reprinted Andrew’s fantasy novel, The Red Dragon. This is the third print run of The Red Dragon, which was first published in 2006 and is the third novel in the Chronicles of Klarin trilogy.
