Andrew’s blurb for Joe Jolce’s book

 

 

 

 

 

 

Andrew wrote a blurb for the back cover of Joe Dolce’s poetry collection, At the Noisy Cafe: Selected Poems 2017-2023, published by Busybird Publishing. The endorsement, excerpted by Joe from personal correspondence between Andrew and himself, reads:

I have given your poems a careful reading. I think they are among the best you have written. You handle the villanelle deftly, lightly, appealingly. When I read the first one, “The murder of Alberta King”, one that I read some time ago and immediately loved, I thought, what can Joe do to better this? And then I found you bettered it (or at least equalled it) time and again.

Andrew Lansdown, winner of the John Bray Notional Poetry Award, the Joseph Furphy Poetry Award and twice winner of Western Australian Premier’s Book Award.

New Book by Andrew – Filling the Emptiness

WA Poets Publishing released a new collection of Andrew’s poetry in February 2025. Titled Filling the Emptiness, the book contains 90 poems on varying subject and in varying forms. The book also contains a six-page Introduction written by Andrew.

You can read more details about Filling the Emptiness, and four sample poems, on this website here.

Copies of Filling the Emptiness can be purchase through the BUY BOOKS page on this website for $25.oo, postage included.

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

Nine poems in Seven issues of The Mozzie

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

Poem in The Mozzie

The Mozzie has published a poem by Andrew in its May 2022 issue (Volume 29, Issue 10). A bitter lament at the plight of the Ukrainians at the hands of the Russians, it is reproduced below:

Ukrainian Villanelle

How we admire them as we watch them die,
the brave beaten unbowed people of Kyiv,
how they lift our spirits and make us sigh.

We applaud as they refuse to comply
with the demand that they lie down to live
and we admire them as we watch them die.

A kid lifts a Kalashnikov to his eye,
a pensioner arms himself with a shiv—
how they lift our spirits and make us sigh!

A husband lingers on a last goodbye
a mother howls a hurt she cannot forgive—
how we admire them as we watch them die.

Who’ll answer tyranny, and how and why?
Let them—they’ve valour enough to give.
How they lift our spirits and make us sigh.

Cowering behind Covid masks, we cry
with all the pretentiousness of a spiv
how we admire them as we watch them die,
how they lift our spirits and make us sigh!

          © Andrew Lansdown

 

Feature image: Homoatrox, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Poem in anthology, The Poet’s Quest for God

 

 

 

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.