Andrew’s poem, “Karesansui”, has been published in Hope: Poems from the 2022 ACU Prize for Poetry, selected and edited by Robert H. F. Carver and Margot Hillel.
Administered by the Australian Catholic University, the annual ACU Prize for Poetry is one of the richest poetry prizes in Australia, and the anthology is among the best to be published yearly.
Alas, Andrew’s poem did not win the prize (what were the judges thinking?). Still, it got in the anthology!
Andrew’s poem, “The Homecoming”, has been published in the anthology, This Gift, This Poem, edited by Jean Kent, David Musgrave, Carolyn Rickett and Jen Webb, and published by Puncher & Wattmann.
When the editors wrote to Andrew requesting a poem in March 2021, they explained that “the motivation behind this current project is to create a collection of poems which would serve as a gift for people in hospital, and for their loved ones and carers who may be supporting them during the anxieties of illness.”
Judith Beveridge states in the book’s blurb,
One of poetry’s chief purposes is to draw people together. It has always been a means for communicating stories, beliefs, customs, and values of a people. In moments of crisis, we turn to poetry because it has that unique ability to express and formalise emotion, to bring something of ourselves into being. This anthology, This Gift, This Poem, does exactly that, keeping readers in its tender yet bracing hold. …
Copies of This Gift, This Poem can be purchase via the publisher’s website, here – https://puncherandwattmann.com/product/this-gift-this-poem/.
After accepting Andrew’s poem, the editors asked for a “Reflection” to accompany it. Both are reproduced below:
The Homecoming
……….1
RestraintAs the car pulls up
the pup goes prancing to the door
to greet my grandkids.
Though I stay put, I too feel like
yapping and rolling on the floor.……….2
AnticipationI hear the dog greet
my grandchildren in the drive.
Shortly, they’ll enter
my study with jostle and shove
and paw at me for scraps of love.Reflection
Two things came together to move me to write “The Homecoming”. First, my wife, Susan, and I were looking after our grandchildren in their own home while their parents were overseas. Second, a close friend, Hal Colebatch, died and his widow, Alexandra, asked me to conduct his funeral service and to deliver the eulogy. While working on the eulogy one afternoon, I heard the children’s dog go berserk with excitement as Susan drove into the carport, bringing the children home from school. And, like the dog, I felt a flood of anticipation and happiness, emotions so at odds with the ones I had just been experiencing. I immediately felt an urge to try to capture some sense of this joy, this gladness, in poetry. So I began work on several short poems—poems modelled on the ancient Japanese poetic form known as the tanka (or, waka), which consists of 31 syllables arranged in five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7, 7 syllables respectively. Over the next few days, I wrote half-a-dozen tanka, and finally settled on the two that now sit together to comprise the poem, “The Homecoming”.
© Andrew Lansdown
Andrew’s poem “Prayer” is included in the landmark anthology, The Poet’s Quest for God: 21st Century Poems of Faith, Doubt and Wonder, edited by Fr. Oliver Brennan & Todd Swift with Kelly Davio & Cate Myddleton-Evans (London: Eyewear Publishing, 2016, 457 pages).
Although Andrew gave permission to the editors and publisher to anthologise his poem back in 2014, it was only recently that he discovered that the anthology was published in 2016.
“Prayer” is a villanelle dedicated to, and prayed on behalf of, Andrew’s late mother. It has been published in several of Andrew’s poetry collections, most recently in Abundance: New and Selected Poems, published in the United States by Cascade Books, and imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers.
As mentioned in a previous post, Andrew recently learnt that one of his poems, “Mr James”, was published without his knowledge in a text book by MacMillan Education Australia 14.
Andrew approached MacMillan last week and the publishing house responded with an apology for the oversight and an offer of a $400 payment. Needless to say, Andrew happily accepted both.
The full publication details of the book in which “Mr James” appears are:
Simply Poetry: A student workbook
eds Rex Sadler & Sandra Sadler
MacMillan Education Australia Pty Ltd (South Yarra)
First published, 2004. Reprinted 2005 (twice), 2006, 2007 (twice)
ISBN: 9780732997755
The poem “Mr James” was first collected in Andrew’s book, Counterpoise (Angus & Robertson, 1980) and is reproduced here:
Mr James
When I was a boy
and needed birds, Mr James
built a cage for me
from large pine-wood cable-reels.And at church on Sundays
he stood at the door,
crushed my knuckles
in the vice of his hand,handed me a hymn book
from his brick-like stack
and banged me with the hammer
of his voice.Of all the kind people
I have known in my life
this man is set apart,
having raised a cathedral in my heart.© Andrew Lansdown