Fay Zwicky’s Poems

Poems by the late Australian poet and academic Fay Zwicky have been posted on this website.

Fay and Andrew were friends, although their contact was mostly limited to book launchings and literary gatherings.

(Andrew and Fay’s association stretches back to the 1980s, when Fay recommended Andrew to the painter Donald S. Green to provide the text for a book on The Swan Waterways. Sponsored by several wealthy business men, Andrew and Donald produced a one-off art-object book, which the sponsors subsequently sold for $250,000 to another business man.)

On 6 June 2015, Andrew gave the launching speech for Shane McCauley’s poetry collection, Trickster, and Fay was among the audience. During a conversation after the launch proceedings, Andrew asked Fay if he could post some of her poems on his (this) website. Fay readily agreed, giving Andrew freedom to post whichever poems he liked.

Albeit belatedly, Andrew has now chosen and posted six of Fay’s poems, which can be read here.

 

 

Poem in The Mozzie

The Mozzie has published one of Andrew’s poems in its September 2021 issue (Vol. 29, Issue 4). The poem, “Loss”, is loosely based on the villanelle, employing its line-repetition pattern and its stanzaic structure, but not its rhyme pattern.

2 poems in inScribe

Andrew has 2 poems in the August 2021 issue (Issue 02) of inScribe: Journal of Creative Writing — “Worship with Water”, a set of 4 tanka, and “Kilter”, a set of 3 haiku. The first 2 tanka in “Worship with Water”, which is set at Hozen Temple in Osaka, Japan, are:

            i
In the temple yard
an old man handpumps water
from a covered well
first for his own ablutions
then for the god’s libations.

…………ii
Ugly with fury,
the sculptured face of Fudo,
deity of fire …
With their water offerings, do
worshippers quench or fuel his ire?

            © Andrew Lansdown

Shortlisted but short of a win

Andrew’s shortlisted book, Abundance: New and Selected Poems, did not win the 2021 Australian Christian Book of the Year Award. What were the judges thinking!

But seriously, congratulations to Stephen McAlpine for winning the Award with his book, Being the Bad Guys.

Interestingly, of the ten books shortlisted for the Australian Christian Book of the Year Award, Andrew’s Abundance was the only poetry collection. The other nine books were all non-fiction works of a theological, apologetic, pastoral or biographical nature. With such a wide variety of genres in the one award, the judges’ task of selecting a winner must have been very difficult.

Concerning Abundance, the Award judges said:

“Andrew Lansdown has spent a lifetime observing, recording, honing and perfecting his art. This collection displays a masterful poet of form and image at home among his family, kingfishers, grasshoppers, puddles and his Lord and Saviour. Play and discipline. Joy and melancholy. Abundance is exquisite, delightful and always powerful.”

Read more about Abundance on this website here. Abundance can be purchased from Koorong Books or through this website, here.

Poem in Quadrant

Andrew’s tribute poem for the late Hal G.P. Colebatch, “Vikings”, was published in the September 2021 issue of Quadrant.

The poem is reproduced in full in an earlier post here, soon after it was first published in The Weekend Australian in March 2020.

It is fitting that this tribute should now appear in the pages of Quadrant, a magazine that regularly published Hal’s poems, stories and essays for over 40 years.

The poem reflects Hal’s passion for the sea and seafaring, his preoccupation with heroism and courage, and his commitment to the Christian faith. In keeping with the Viking analogies, the poem employs the old Anglo-Saxon and Norse poetic techniques of alliteration and kenning.

Abundance shortlisted for Australian Christian Book of the Year

Andrew’s latest poetry collection, Abundance: New and Selected Poems, published in the USA by Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers, has been shortlisted for the 2021 Australian Christian Book of the Year Award. The Award is organised by The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge Australia Incorporated (SparkLit), and further details can be learned from the official website, SparkLit – Igniting Christian Writing.

The winner will be announced on 2 September 2021.

You can read several sample poems from Abundance here. Go here to purchase a copy.

Poems in The Mozzie

The last two issues of The Mozzie each contain one of Andrew’s poems.

His poem “The Biblical Maples”, a set of four tanka, is in the June 2021 issue (Vol. 29, Issue 1) of The Mozzie.

His poem “Ascendant Maple”, a set of three light-hearted haiku, is in the July 2021 issue (Vol. 29, Issue 2) of The Mozzie.

5 poems in Quadrant

 

 

 

The latest issue (July-August 2021) of Quadrant magazine includes 5 of Andrew’s poems—”So Far South”, “Gleam”, “The Bodhisattva’s Bib”, “A Game of Anything”, and “Bamboo Triptych”.

“The Bodhisattva’s Bib” is a set of 4 haiku, while “Bamboo Triptych” is a suit for 3 tanka. “So Far South”, “Gleam”, and “A Game of Anything” are free form poems. “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

Andrew Burke’s missing poems

 

 

There are two outstanding poems missing from Andrew Burke’s latest, excellent New & Selected Poems—”Little White Pills”, from his 1996 collection, Pushing at Silence. , and “Pastoral”, from his first book (1975), let’s face the music & dance.

Rejoice, the missing poems have been found! You can read them on this website, here, and transcribe them into the front of your copy of Andrew Burke’s New & Selected Poems.