Andrew ran poetry workshops for Years 7, 8 and 9 students at Swan Christian College on 19 September.
Andrew is available to run poetry and fiction workshops at primary and high schools and usually charges Australian Society of Authors’ rates.
Andrew invited to read at City Library during Poetry Week
Andrew Lansdown reading at City Library, Perth (Photo courtesy Elizabeth Lewis)
Perth City Library celebrated Poetry Week 2014 with a series of free events for poetry lovers in the first week of September. The final event was a poetry reading hosted by poet Kevin Gillam in the foyer of the City Library on Friday 5 September from 12.00 noon – 2.00 pm.
Andrew was one of three poets invited to read. The other two were Anna Dunnill and Connor Weightman. Other poets in the audience read during the open mic segments.
Andrew read several poems from each of his last three books, The Colour of Life (in Two Poets, Fremantle Press, 2011), Gestures of Love (Wombat Books, 2013) and Inadvertent Things (Walleah Press, 2013).
Poem in art exhibition catalogue
(Painting: Daniel Webster, Self Portrait 2014, digital print, acrylic, Japanese ink, triptych: each panel 80 x 57 cm, $5,000)
Ron Nyisztor, the curator of the 2014 Mine Own Executioner art exhibition, has used Andrew’s poem, “I Do Not Forget”, as the introductory statement in the exhibition catalogue.
Mine Own Executioner has established its reputation as WA’s pre-eminent exhibition of self-portraiture, fascinating audiences with diverse interpretations and representations of the self since the inaugural exhibition in 1995.
Presented by the Mundaring Arts Centre, this exhibition has challenged over 300 of Western Australia’s most significant artists to investigate the notion of self-portraiture.
Each year, the selected artists are invited by the curator to consider their approach to their visual interpretations in relation to the chosen curatorial theme.
Mine Own Executioner in 2014 presents an intriguing collection of new works by seminal Western Australian artists, with the aim of reflecting the depth and range of creative arts practice currently at work in our artistic community. Curated by Ron Nyisztor, these 18 West Australian artists have manifested an image of themselves free from the constraints of an overarching exhibition theme. (Information taken from the Mundaring Arts Centre website – http://www.mundaringartscentre.com.au/mine-own-executioner/)
The 2014 Mine Own Executioner portraits can be viewed on the Mundaring Arts Centre website, here – http://www.mundaringartscentre.com.au/online-gallery-mine-own-executioner-2014
Andrew’s poem can be read in the catalogue, which is available online as a pdf download, here – http://static.squarespace.com/static/52ca5eaae4b05c5f2d7b76de/t/538d3b3be4b08a8b36a01e47/1401764667282/MineOwnExecutioner_Catalogue_2014_spread.pdf
Poem broadcast on Poetica
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.
A podcast of the program can be downloaded from the ABC Radio National website here at http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/poetica/new-australian-love-poetry/5154464
The reading of Andrew’s poem begins 16.30 minutes into the program.
Judge’s Report: Karen W Treanor Poetry Awards
.
.
.
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:
Judge’s Report:
Karen W Treanor Poetry Awards 2013
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 …
New collection of poems in Japanese forms
Walleah Press (North Hobart, Tasmania) has published a new collection of Andrew’s poems. Titled Inadvertent Things, the collection consists entirely of poems written in the traditional Japanese forms of haiku, tanka and choka.
Read the blurb and several poems from Inadvertent Things on this website here.
Purchase Inadvertent Things with PayPal through this website here, or through the Walleah Press website here, or you can order it through your local bookshop.
New poetry collection
.
Wombat Books/Even Before Publishing has published a new collection of Andrew’s poems, Gestures of Love: The Fatherhood Poems.
As the subtitle indicates, the collection is a thematic one, with all the poems focused on family and fatherhood.
While some of the poems are new (uncollected), most have been taken been selected from Andrew’s other poetry collections.
As stated on the back cover blurb:
.
Few poets have explored the weight and wonder of fatherhood like Andrew Lansdown.
Over the years he has established a high reputation for his subtle, insightful poems about his wife and children.
Acclaimed poet and critic Geoff Page has observed that “Lansdown has a very sincere and direct way of handling poems about his immediate family which subtly suggests great tenderness without becoming sentimental.” And world-renowned poet Les Murray has claimed that “no one writes of family love with more tenderness than he.”
Now, for the first time, Andrew’s widely-published, award-wining poems celebrating family life are gathered in one collection, Gestures of Love. These fatherhood poems are bound to delight and move all readers—not only parents, but also anyone interested in the joy, grief and quirkiness of the human condition.
Gestures of Love (pp. 136) is priced at $15.00 and can be bought through this website or from Wombat Books or ordered through you local bookshop.
2 ways to buy books
In the past week, two uses of this website bought eight of Andrew’s books. One purchased five books using PayPal, while the other purchased three books using a downloadable Order Form. Both methods of purchase will continue to be available for the foreseeable future.
To use PayPal to purchase books, go to the BUY BOOKS page by clicking HERE, then select the book/s you want and add them to your Cart.
If you prefer, you can download an ORDER FORM by clicking HERE, then print it out, fill it out and post it off with a cheque or money order.
Buy Andrew’s Books with PayPal
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/