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/

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]

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/

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.

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.

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

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/352336294

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.

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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:

What Poetry Is Really About

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. …

[READ THE REST OF THE REVIEW HERE]

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/