Ten Tanka in Relief (USA)

The United States magazine, Relief: a journal of arts and faith, has published Andrew’s poem, “The Remarkable Maples, Kyoto”, a set of ten tanka.

All ten tanka are linked by a common subject (maples), a common setting (Kyoto, autumn), a common structure (five lines arranged in 5-7-5-7-7 syllables), a common technique (extended metaphor/conceit and a closing couplet rhyme/half-rhyme), a common tone (light, if occasionally subdued) and a common purpose (surprise and celebration). The final tanka is representative of the other nine:

Winter is too far
advanced to be arrested—
yet many a star
remain pinned to the maples,
the last of autumn’s marshals.

© Andrew Lansdown

 

Poem in The Other Journal (USA)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Other Journal, presented twice yearly by the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology in the USA, published one of Andrew’s poems in its Fall 2022 issue (No. 34). The poem, “Restraint”, is reproduced below.

Restraint

But forget for now the galaxies,
the trillion trillion stars strewn
across space towards infinity—

forget even the orbiting planets
with or without oceans and whales,
volcanoes, dinosaurs and sequoia—

forget for now all that, and think
only of the astonishing power
the Almighty exercised to restrain

his boundless bounding power
for the sake of making something
as delicate as that donkey orchid.

© Andrew Lansdown

Five poems in Quadrant

 

 

March 2023 issue of Quadrant contains five poems by Andrew. They are: “Getting Light”, “Hole”, “Pictures of Plants”, “The Calming Clams”, and “Locations of Red”. “Pictures of Plants” is a gunsaku, a set of six haiku on (as the set title indicates) the subject of plants.

“Holes” was written after a visit to a small graveyard in Kyoto, Japan, where women had left offerings before an idol of Jizo, a Buddhist Bodhisattva to whom women appeal to save their deceased children from a hell-like place called Sai no Kawar. The poem is reproduced below.

 

Holes

Japan: Jizō Bosatsu, guardian of the souls
of miscarried, aborted and stillborn children (mizuko)

A persimmon
left as an offering to
Jizo Bosatsu
has been holed by birds, just like
a mother’s heart, holed by grief.

Also without
a centre, a five-yen coin
offered to Jizo
by a mother aching to save
her mizuko from limbo.

© Andrew Lansdown

Two Poems in inScribe

Inscribe: Journal of Creative Writing has published two of Andrew’s poems in its “Birds” issue (No. 5, 2023). Andrew’s poems are “Blessed”, about sparrows sandbathing on the banks of the Kamogawa in Kyoto, and “Zebra Finches, Wangkatjungka”. The latter poem is a set of eight haiku celebrating, as the title indicates, zebra finches in and around an aboriginal community in the north or Western Australia. The first and last haiku are:

Butterfly sprinkler—
beckoning by fluttering
a flock of finches.

The close of day—
only a peg and a finch
left on the line.

© Andrew Lansdown

Poem in Grieve anthology

 

One of Andrew’s poems has been published in Grieve: Stories and Poems of Grief and Loss, Volume 10, 2022.

The Grieve anthology is published annually by the Hunter Writers Centre (Newcastle, NSW)

Andrew’s poem in the Grieve anthology is “Those Stones”.

Poem in Brushstrokes III

 

Andrew’s poem, “Bats”, is included in Brushstrokes III, an anthology of the best poems entered into the Ros Spencer Poetry Contest in 2022. The anthology is published by WA Poets Publishing, a division of WA Poets Inc, and the poetry selection was mad by Coral Carter.

Two poems in Seagift

The inaugural issue of Seagift 2022 contains two poems by Andrew—”The Homecoming” and “A Game of Anything”.

To quote the magazine Introduction, “Seagift is … a beginning. It is an inaugural collection of poems, non-fiction, and fiction curated by members of the Creative Writing team at Sheridan Institute of Higher Education.” The members of the curating/editorial team are: Melinda Tognini, T. C. Shelley and Miriam Wei Wei Lo.

Although Andrew was/is not part of the editorial team, he is an adjunct lecturer in Creative Writing at Sheridan Institute.

The text of Andrew’s poem, “A Game of Anything”, is reproduced below:

 

 

A Game of Anything

I am watching two little girls
like ducklings tottering

in line behind their mother—
only, they are making a game

of the going, taking care
with wing-flappings for balance

to keep in the lanky shadow
she is casting on the asphalt

as she trundles her trolly
in the late afternoon sunlight

through the shopping-centre carpark.

© Andrew Lansdown

two poems in inScribe

 

 

Two of Andrew’s Poems—”Kimberly Hand” and “Meditations On Impermanence”—have been published in inScribe: Journal of Creative Writing, No. 4, August 2022.

“Meditations On Impermanence” is a set of four tanka. “Kimberly Hand”, reproduced below, consists of two stanzas, each with a syllabic structure like a tanka.

 

 

Kimberley Hand

Stencilled on stone
in spattered orange ochre—
a hand that once held
a flint knife and a fire stick,
a war club and a child’s hand.

It was, I suppose,
a hunter’s hand, this outline
in ochre spatter:
I suppose, too, none can tell
if he meant to wave farewell.

© Andrew Lansdown

Poem in The Mozzie

Volume 30, Issue 6 (January 2023) of The Mozzie contains a poem by Andrew. The poem, “After the Fishermen”, consists two tanka. The second, subtitled “Spillage” is reproduced below.

 

2. Spillage

Pluck a red petal
from a gerbera, string it
with other petals …
Now look at the gills spilling
from the severed salmon head …

© Andrew Lansdown