5 poems in St Mark’s Review

Five of Andrew’s poems have been published in a special issue of St Mark’s Review (No. 238, December 2016), which is published quarterly by St Mark’s National Theological Centre in Canberra.

The special issue, titled Poetry and the sacred, was guest-edited by Australian poet, John Foulcher.

Other poets represented in the magazine include Alex Skovron, Michelle Cahill, Robert Gray, Kevin Hart, Anne Elvey, Judith Beveridge, Mark Tredinnick, Alan Gould, Geoff Page and Bruce Dawe.

Andrew’s poems in St Mark’s Review No. 238 are “Sakura Haiku”, “Sheep”, “In Transit”, “Black Bamboo” and “Sehnsucht“.

Andrew wins poetry prize


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Andrew has won the 2016 Melbourne Poets Union International Poetry Prize. The $1,500 prize was awarded to him for his poem “Kyoto Autumn Maples”, which is a sequence of six tanka.

In his Judge’s Report, poet John Jenkins expressed great admiration for “Kyoto Autumn Maples”. His opening comment was:

This winning poem is a model of clarity and economy, of descriptive facility and finely wrought imagery. It is about a foreigner who visits maple groves on the hillsides around Kyoto, Japan.

Competition Judge, John Jenkins
Competition Judge, John Jenkins

After offering detailed comments on each of the six tanka comprising the poem, Jenkins concluded:

Thus the maples and maple walk register a range of human senses and modes of perception, all accreting into an elegant whole; though not in an over-studied way, but with a light, almost casual hand. In spite of its exotic setting, the poem has an unforced familiarity, that of a traveller simply describing a journey, someone on holiday who is simply looking on – yet a traveller who, as it becomes increasingly obvious – also has a clear-minded ability to deeply enter and appreciate other cultures.

2 poems in Quadrant


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The January-February 2017 issue of Quadrant contains two of Andrew’s poems: “Heron” and “Splendid” . Both poems are three-haiku gunsaku. The third haiku in “Splendid” is:

 

If not in colour,
at least in shape—the female
splendid blue wren.

          © Andrew Lansdown

Poem in Studio


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The latest issue of Studio magazine (No. 139) contains one of Andrew’s poems, “In the Gardens of the Imperial Palace”.

Also, one of Andrew’s photographs has been used on the cover.

4 poems in US anthology


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USA publisher, Cascade Books (Eugene, Oregon), has included four of Andrew’s poems in an anthology of Christian poetry titled The Turning Aside, edited by Canadian poet, D.S. Martin. Poems by Andrew in the anthology are: “The Colour of Life”, “Prayer”, “Kangaroos” and “Black Bamboo”.

Editor D.S Martin comments,

The Turning Aside is about stepping out of our routines–like Moses turning from tending sheep, like a certain man selling his everything to buy a field–to take time to consider the ways of God in the company of some of the finest poets of our time. Turn aside with such established poets as Wendell Berry, Les Murray, Luci Shaw, Elizabeth Jennings, Richard Wilbur, Dana Gioia, and Christian Wiman–and respond to their invitation for us to muse along with them. Walk with poets from various parts of the planet, even though some of them are less known, whose words have been carefully crafted to encourage us in our turning aside.
The Turning Aside is a collection of Christian poetry from dozens of the most spiritually insightful poetic voices of recent years. It is a book I have long dreamed of compiling, and it has grown beyond my mere imagining in its fulfilment.

Reviews and endorsements of the anthology (posted on the publisher’s website) are encouraging:

“D. S. Martin’s The Turning Aside offers a marvelous harvest of serious Christian poetry–an unusually rich and various representation of spiritual as well as poetic excellence. This is a treasury, a volume for the bedside table, there to be savored slowly–read as a prompt to meditation, prayer, and a deepened devotion to Scripture.”
–David Lyle Jeffrey, FRSC, Distinguished Professor of Literature and the Humanities, Baylor University

“I have been waiting for this collection for thirty years, literally. I am almost speechless. In this company of poets, lifters-of-the-veil between heaven and earth, I have no need for my own words. I only want to borrow theirs. And I shall–in worship, in church, in literary company. I am certain this magnificent collection will turn many aside from our mechanistic tromp through our days into the wondrous, piercing reality of God-with-us right here, right now.”
–Leslie Leyland Fields, poet, speaker, and author of Crossing the Waters: Following Jesus through the Storms, the Fish, the Doubt, and the Seas

The Turning Aside is a spectacular collection bringing together under one roof the finest Christian poets of the age. Its pages provide awesome, inspiring, even mystical reading, with lines to linger over in meditation.”
–Ron Hansen, author of The Kid

“This collection brings together an expansive, idiosyncratic, and intriguing group of poets, some you’ll know well and others you’ll be thankful to discover. Their work forms a rich banquet that is often surprising and, in the end, supremely artful. The book has the power to (paraphrasing Tania Runyan) ‘singe the edges of our silent lives.'”
–Daniel Bowman Jr., author of A Plum Tree in Leatherstocking Country; Editor-in-Chief of Relief: A Journal of Art & Faith; Associate Professor of English, Taylor University

The Tuning Aside can be purchased via the publisher’s website here.

2 poems in Quadrant


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Two of Andrew’s poems — “Recollections of Dread and Deliverance” and “Comfort” — have been published in the December 2016 issue of Quadrant. “Recollections”, written for Andrew’s wife, Susan, is reprinted below:

Recollections of Dread and Deliverance

Dearest, when you haemorrhaged

(I am of a sudden with hurt and horror

recalling it these near-three decades on),

 

when back in the ward after the birthing

the nurse drew down from your white face

the bedcover to uncover that swamp

 

of blood from your wounded womb,

that crimson saturation of nightdress

and sheet, I plunged to pleas and please!

 

and when they wheeled you on the trolley

away to the theatre, not now for new life

but for your life, I feared you’d gone for good

 

but by the doctor’s good hand the Hand

of God touched you, staunched you, spared you

for me and our newborn daughter and all

 

the other loved ones who loved you

as I loved you and love you still with kisses

and wide wishes and everlasting longings.

 


© Andrew Lansdown

Poem in The Canberra Times

Andrew’s poem “Incidentals”, a 4-haiku gunsaku set in Kyoto, was published by the Canberra Times, in the weekend Panorama magazine, on 27 August 2016. The last haiku in the set is:

 

Blocking a water

trickle—a little levee

of cherry petals. 

            © Andrew Lansdown

Poem in The Mozzie

The August 2016 issue of The Mozzie (Vol. 24, Issue 6) contains one of Andrew’s poems – a gunsaku consisting of four haiku under the heading, “Petals Scattering”.

7 poems in Quadrant

Seven of Andrew’s poems have been published in the September 2016 issue of Quadrant. The poems are: “Thinking of You”, “The Festooned Pine”, “Omikuji Blossom”, “Pact”, “Travelling”, “Winter, Wisconsin” and “A Little Herd”.

“The Festooned Pine” also appears in Andrew’s latest book, Kyoto Sakura Tanka, which is composed of poems (tanka) and photographs of Kyoto in the cherry blossom (sakura) season. “The Festooned Pine” is reproduced below, with the photograph that accompanies it in the book:

.

.

The Festooned Pine

 

At a Shinto shrine,

white paper slips, omikuji,

knotted to a pine—

sacred ballots of the kami,

forming a strange origami.

 

        © Andrew Lansdown

Poem in Little Book of Australian Orchids

Andrew’s poem, “The Spider Orchids”, has been published in Little Book of Australian Orchids, published by the National Library of Australia. In addition to poems by various poets, the beautifully produced book contains colour illustrations of Australian orchids painted by various artists in the 1800s and early 1900s.

“The Spider Orchids” was first published in Andrew’s award-winning collection, Between Glances, published by William Heinemann Australia in 1993.

Andrew has had poems published in five of the National Library of Australia’s Little Book series. The other collections that include his poems are Little Book of Cats, Little Book of Butterflies, Little Book of Trees, and Little Book of Banksias.