Andrew’s poem “The Plumegrasses of Kyoto” is included in Poetry d’Amour 2024. The anthology is published by WA Poets Publishing (WAPP) and contains poems selected by Shey Marque from the 2024 Poetry d’Amour Love Poetry Contest.
Andrew’s poem, a tanka, is a love poem for his wife, Susan. Quite unrelated to Andrew’s poem, however, the anthology carries a content warning regarding some explicit material.
Issue 160 (2024) of Studio magazine contains four of Andrew’s poems—”Last Laughs: two lyrics for my father”, “About Emptiness” (a set of three haiku) and “Among Autumn Maples” (reproduced below).
One of Andrew’s photographs—of Osaki Hachimangu Shrine in Sendai, Japan—was used for the cover of this issue of Studio.
Among Autumn Maples
I see four men walking in the midst of the fire …
and the appearance of the fourth is like … Daniel 3:25
An affinity
with those men in Babylon
unfazed by fire—
that’s what I feel as I walk
through this maple inferno.‘A son of the gods’
is how the 4th man appeared
as he braved the fire.
How I’m pining to see him
walking among the maples!© Andrew Lansdown
The current issue of Eucalypt: A Tanka Journal (Issue 34, 2023) contains a poem, a tanka, by Andrew. It is reproduced (in the journal’s style, without title or capitals) below.
how, I wonder,
how can it keep holding on—
the small spider
splayed in thin rigging between
the reeds the wind is shaking?© Andrew Lansdown
The May 2023 issue of The Mozzie contains a set a set of four tanka under the common title, “Found Art”. The first tanka in the set, “The Painterly Bird”, is reproduced below.
The Painterly Bird
A blackbird roosting
on a branch overarching
a lush violet patch
dollops some oily white paint
onto a small green palette.© Andrew Lansdown
Andrew had nine poems in seven issues of The Mozzie in 2022:
Volume 29, Issue 7, January 2022 — “Breakdown”
Volume 29, Issue 10, May 2022 — “Ukrainian Villanelle” (text of poem posted on August 12, 2022)
Volume 30, Issue 1, July 2022 — “She”
Volume 30, Issue 2, August 2022 — “Little Things” and “The Dunking Birds”
Volume 30, Issue 3, August 2022 — “Times of Fox-Dread”
Volume 30, Issue 4, October 2022 — “Petal Poems, Kyoto”
Volume 30, Issue 5, December 2022 — “Ninth Month”
“Ninth Month”, a light-hearted, imagist tanka, is reproduced below:
Ninth Month
A cement mixer—
the shape, of course, but even
the way while sleeping
she would toss about and turn
to keep our child on the churn.© Andrew Lansdown
Eucalypt: A Tanka Journal has published one of Andrew’s tanka, in Issue 31, 2021. It is reproduced below in the magazine’s style, without title or capitals:
but how could she know,
the child yanking her hand free
from her grandmother’s:
soon enough she might be left
with nobody’s hand to hold?© Andrew Lansdown
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
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.
The Canadian print and online magazine Ekstasis has published Andrew’s poem “The Biblical Maples”, a set of four tanka. The poem can be read on the Ekstasis website here: www.ekstasismagazine.com/poetry/2021/7/25/the-biblical-maples
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.