Vale Andrew Burke

Left: Andrew Lansdown and Andrew Burke, 2022

Right: Susan & Andrew Lansdown and
Jeanette & Andrew Burke

Photographs: Susan Lansdown, 21 February 2022

 

Andrew Burke passed away on Tuesday, 23rd May, 2023. He was a widely published Australian poet and was widely respected in Australian literary circles. More importantly, he was a loving husband to Jeanette and father to Miles, Charles and Alice. He was a good natured man who was a good friend to many.

Andrew Burke was also a good friend to Andrew Lansdown, who will be conducting his funeral service at Karrakatta Cemetery on Friday, 9th June, at 10.15 am. Friends and admirers of Andrew B. are invited to come and pay their respects.

Some of Andrew Burke’s poems can be read on the Other Poets & Poems page on this website here.

A poem by Andrew L. for and about Andrew B. can be read on this website here.

Two Poems in Quadrant

 

 

Two of Andrew’s poems—”Poet of Quirk” and “A Not-So-Nonsense Poem”—have been published in the May 2023 issue of Quadrant magazine.

“Poet of Quirk”, a villanelle written for and about Australian poet Andrew Burke, is reproduced below.

Andrew Burke is one of the poets featured in the Other Poets & Poems section of this website, and you can read 11 of his poems here.

 

 

Poet of Quirk

I write in praise of Andrew Burke—
doyen of wit, slayer of pulp
and fabulous poet of Quirk.

Readers who wander in his work
where words yap and images whelp
unite in praise of Andrew Burke.

No fake profundity through murk,
no purple passions through yelp—
this fantastic poet of Quirk.

While others primp and play the clerk,
he gets to grips with glee and gulp—
I write, of course, of Andrew Burke.

Like me, he loves the poet’s work
and pokes snipe-like at poesy’s kelp—
this fanciful poet of Quirk.

Though I grieve his kicking of kirk,
I love him still and cannot help
but write in praise of Andrew Burke,
Aussie’s frabjous poet of Quirk.

© Andrew Lansdown

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 Westerly

 

 

 

Westerly magazine published one of Andrew’s poems, “Dip”, in issue 65.1, 2020.

Although “Dip” is written in free form, it nonetheless employs (as is the case with many of Andrew’s poems) a one-off, self-imposed syllabic metre.

It consists of a single descriptive statement that unfolds in four-syllable lines arranged in six couplets, each couplet loosely embodying a conceptual unit.

Each line is enjambed, four of them in such a way as to break a word mid-syllable or mid-compound.

The poem employs alliteration, moving from “d” to “p” and “g” sounds.

It attempts to capture in a single, succinct sweep an image, a scene, Andrew saw in Kyoto, Japan.

Dip

A little dip
in the broad rim

directs the brim-
ming rainwater

where to over-
flow, gliding slow

or quick in drib-
ble, drip or drop,

from the wide cup
of the level-

standing garden
granite basin.

        © Andrew Lansdown

“Dip” is included in Andrew’s latest collection, Abundance: New and Selected Poems, published in December 2020 in the USA by Wipf and Stock Publishers.

Geoffrey Lehmann’s poem on this website

A new page has been added to this website, to the OTHER POETS & POEMS section. It contains a poem, “Parenthood”, by the masterful Australian poet, Geoffrey Lehmann. Accompanying the poem is a critical analysis by another great Australian poet, Geoff Page. Both poets have granted Andrew permission to use their work on his website.

Read the poem and the critique here.

(Photograph: Wikipedia.org)