Gestures of Love: The Fatherhood Poems
Andrew Lansdown
Wombat Books (Capalaba, Queensland), 2013
(paperback, 136 pages)
ISBN: 9781922074706
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.
Preface
Andrew and his wife, Susan, have five children, three sons and two daughters, who were born over an 18-year period. Their first son was at university when their last son was born. This is why Andrew could write about a one-year-old son in 1978 and again in 1996.
Andrew is widely respected for his poems about his family. 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 Les Murray has claimed that “no one writes of family love with more tenderness than he.”
The poems in this collection span 35 years of fatherhood and are selected from twelve published collections of poetry. Many of these poems have been revised since they first appeared in Andrew’s other books. Some previously uncollected poems are also included.
Three poems from Gestures of Love
Homecoming
It is thrilling to be so loved.
Hearing my step on the veranda
he bellows to Mum that I’m home
and races to the door to greet me.
To be so loved. It is thrilling.
Seeing me he bursts into welcome,
with glad prattle, great prancing
and that sheer shine on his face!
© Andrew Lansdown
Rhyme
I sing a rhyme for my daughter
of a teapot short and stout.
She mimes a clumsy kettle,
crooks a handle, points a spout.
The world is wide with danger,
my life is dark with doubt,
but a child commands me sweetly,
‘Come on, Daddy, dance and shout!’
Sometimes I sense my children
have turned my life about.
They top me up with gladness,
tip me over, pour me out.
© Andrew Lansdown
Apples
She lifts her long skirt
to cradle the windfalls.
Her legs are very white,
like the flesh of apples.
Some things about women
a woman can never know.
Else she would not stand
with her skirt caught up.
Or she would more often.
She stands in the shade
of the laden tree, unaware
I am aware of her legs.
Beloved, even the apples
are blushing in your lap.
© Andrew Lansdown
Review of Gestures of Love
UNTITLED REVIEW
by Paul Grover
Inadvertent Things: Poems in traditional Japanese forms
Andrew Lansdown — Walleah Press, 2013 — PO Box 368, North Hobart, Tasmania 7002
Gestures of Love: The Fatherhood Poems
Andrew Lansdown — Wombat Books, 2013 — PO Box 1519, Capabala, Qld 4157
Andrew Lansdown is a well-known name in the pages of Studio, and these two new books, both published in 2013, are books with a specific theme and focus. Inadvertent Things is a carefully crafted collection of poems using traditional Japanese poetry forms, the choka, tanka and haiku. Andrew writes with the poet’s precise eye and the insight of the sensitive observer. At the beginning of the book the author provides a helpful guide to reading these traditional Japanese poetry forms, and then immediately provides us with a rich tapestry of nature poems that carefully analyse a moment in nature, an instant in time or a point in life to inform and inspire us. As Les Murray says of Andrew’s work:
Andrew Lansdown is an imagist of almost unlimited inventiveness. His observant eye can graze, can focus on the tiniest quiddity and make it perpetual or it can feast on a subject and draw out an inexhaustible wealth of comparison.
On inadvertent things, Andrew says in one poem:
Inadvertent Things (2)
Could it be, even
though they look like happenstance,
inadvertent things
are signs of Benevolence—
less than fate but more than chance?
Andrew looks within and beyond all that is around us, in nature, in life, and exposes the ‘this-ness’ of this life, and the ‘nature’ of nature. In a personally reflective moment he writes:
Mistake
A mistake I’ve made
for most of my life has been
to think the mundane
is not really part of my life
but merely a hindrance to it.
Gestures of Love is a fine collection of poems about fatherhood, a rare subject for a whole collection—and this collection explores the whole gamut of fatherhood experience: the joys, the griefs, moments of delight and despair just as Andrew Lansdown looks with a poet’s precise eye at the small things of nature, and sees large signs and deep meaning, so too does he focus on the many moments fathers experience with sons and daughters, and draws rich insights and richer relationships. He truly garners the gestures of love in this collection:
Gestures of Love
He waves a greeting
then, grinning, skips back to play
How can I gamer,
against the times of leanness,
such simple gestures of love?
This collection is one to savour, one to revisit often, and one to explore. Geoff Page has observed of Andrew’s poetry:
Lansdown has a very sincere and direct way of handling poems about his immediate family which subtly suggests great tenderness without becoming sentimental.
This observation is echoed throughout this special collection, as we are invited into the poet’s mind and heart as he watches his children grow, explore life, question the world around them and face their childhood challenges.
© Paul Grover
Studio, No. 130, 2014
Untitled Review
by Warwick Marsh
It is so hard to explain fatherhood and the many emotions it entails, but Andrew Lansdown, from Perth, has done a cracking job. His new book of poems called ‘Gestures of Love – the Fatherhood Poems’ is full of moments and emotions experienced by fathers the world over.
Les Murray, arguably Australia’s greatest living poet, writes:
“Many of Andrew Lansdown’s poems have to power to bless, to unsettle now with mysterious calm, now with the deep resonance of poetry. Of all Australian imagists, he is the one with the broadest and warmest human sympathy, and no one writes of family love with more tenderness than he.”
The media release provided by the publisher, Even Before Publishing, gives an accurate description of this collection of fatherhood poems.
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.’
Now, for the first time, Andrew’s widely-published, award-winning 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 any interested in the joy, grief and quirkiness of the human condition.
Allow me to share some of Andrew’s 118 poems, from this particular volume, with you. May you enjoy them as much as we have! Happy reading!
First Child
So, the doctor has confirmed
what we had scarce presumed:
the force and fuse of our love
has exploded into life.I can see it in your face,
the joy, as you proudly pace
from the consultation room,
I too am glad, though a gloomhas gathered round about me.
Now there is no doubt, who can share
the desolation and despair
of this immense responsibility?Having asked, strangely I am relieved:
just as I was born in God’s Mind
aeons before I was conceived
so also our child, whom He will refine.from Gestures of Love – The Fatherhood Poems
© Andrew Lansdown 2013
In First Child Andrew has captured both the joy and the fear that men experience as they anticipate the birth of their first child in his wonderful whimsical way.
Rhyme
I sing a rhyme for my daughter
of a teapot short and stout.
She mimes a clumsy kettle,
crooks a handle, points a spout.The world is wide with danger,
my life is dark with doubt,
but a child commands me sweetly,
‘Come on, daddy, dance and shout!’Sometimes I sense my children
have turned my life about.
They top me up with gladness,
tip me over, pour me out.from Gestures of Love – The Fatherhood Poems
© Andrew Lansdown 2013
The above poem is a beautiful metaphor the children’s song that you may know. Hence the title ‘Rhyme’.
I’m a little teapot, short and stout.
Here is my handle, here is my spout.
When I get all steamed up, hear me shout,
‘Tip me over, pour me out’.
We all know that our children turn our lives upside down. To a certain extent we have to allow this. The challenge is to look past the annoyance of our children’s demands and embrace the state of poured-out-ness with gladness.
Aftermath
If he were home
we would hardlyknow what to say
to each other,my son and I-
my eldest son.So why this deep
pang in my heart?from Gestures of Love – The Fatherhood Poems
© Andrew Lansdown 2013
Aftermath is an eloquent look at a father’s difficulty in expressing himself to his children, despite his deep love and care. This poem reminds me of the song by Paul Simon:
I know a father who had a son.
He longed to tell him all the reasons for the things he’d done.
He came a long way just to explain.
He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping then he turned around and headed home again.
Slip sliding away, slip sliding away.
You know the nearer your destination, the more you’re slip sliding away.
Such is the challenge of fatherhood.
Warwick Marsh
21 September 2013
https://warwickmarsh.com/gestures-of-love-fatherhood-poems/
A Father’s Poetic Love
by Kara Martin
A review of Gestures of Love: The Fatherhood Poems by Andrew Lansdown. Published by Even Before Publishing.
I had not heard of Andrew Lansdown before, and yet he is an extremely accomplished writer and poet with more than 18 books of poetry and fiction published. He has won several state literary awards, and been shortlisted for a national award. He is a regular at poetry festivals around Australia.
More pertinent to his latest book, he is a father of five children.
He has put together a collection of poems, Gestures of Love, which is a celebration of fatherhood. It is such a treat to read a collection of fine poems. Poetry and songs seem to have that ability to send arrows through and open up our hearts.
His poems traverse the whole experience of fatherhood, from conception:
So, the doctor has confirmed
What we had scarce presumed:
The force and fuse of our love
Has exploded into life.
To birth:
After the long pain –
such brightness on her face as
she held our firstborn,
his head still messy with blood
and vernix and forceps-marks!
Through the first few months of babyhood:
Everyone else is asleep
and I am up this early
only to keep my small son from crying
To the delightful toddler years:
‘I heard a song and
it was pink,’ she says, pestering
me to come and see.
I follow her to the front yard
as the ice-cream van drives away.
To the time when the nest is empty
Not until they took
their independenceof me, my children –
not until then, thendid I discover
just how much I amin dependence, in
dependence on them.
Through it all is a rich knowledge of, and celebration of his faith mingling with his experiences of fatherhood, and imparted to his children.
Your life has spoken
The mysterious grammar of godliness,
The deep logic of love and law.Father, if in eternity I have a place,
it is because (no matter how jaded)
I first saw Jesus in your face.
Lansdown’s poetry creeps up on you. As the Oxford Companion for Poetry comments: “The effect of his poetry is cumulative.” This reference also notes that Lansdown is unusual amongst his modern colleagues because his poems have a mood of contentment and joy, as well as “consistent technical excellence.” It is a tribute to him that the iconic Les Murray has dedicated a poem to him, with the final line: “it glories like the kingdom within Andrew.”
This is a wonderful collection of poems, and a lovely tribute to fatherhood. Perhaps it is fitting to close with a characteristically playful stanza, which captures the delight of parenting:
Sometimes I sense my children
have turned my life about.
They top me up with gladness,
tip me over, pour me out.
KARA MARTIN is the Associate Dean of the Marketplace Institute, Ridley Melbourne, has been a lecturer with School of Christian Studies, and Wesley Institute and is an avid reader and book group attendee. Kara does book reviews for Hope 103.2’s Open House and Eternity.
© Kara Martin
Wednesday 20 November 2013
http://www-archive.biblesociety.org.au/news/fathers-poetic-love-review-gestures-love
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