Andrew Lansdown: 'Inadvertent Things'

Andrew Lansdown: ‘Inadvertent Things’, poems in traditional Japanese forms – published August 2013

‘as to the eye

so to the ear …’

So Lansdown writes. He’s right: the senses come alive in the gentle words of these poems on the Australian field of his page. If sonnets are standard roses, these haiku and tanka are nasturtiums growing wild. Naturer’s minutiae are celebrated here, along with the warmth of loving relationships. Lansdown’s point of view is consistently humble but his moods are many – but a rasping blues to a lyrical whistle.

               ANDREW BURKE

Comments on Andrew’s other books

Andrew’s poetry is much influenced by Japanese short forms such as haiku and tanka that aim to capture the particularity, the is-ness, of (usually) a natural object, animal or scene. The goal is to achieve a rendering of this essence in just a few words. Andrew is adept at both forms …
                Shane McCauley

Lansdown can construct poems drawing on various forms from Japanese prosody that often have a gemlike imagistic beauty to them …
                Rod Moran

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. …
                Les Murray

Lansdown is one of the most assured of Australian poets working in the Imagist tradition … he has written a considerable number of poems which are perfect examples of their kind. They have a descriptive exactness and a seeming spontaneity, combining to produce a text to which one can imagine no change being made without damage.

                Geoff Page