Poems

Andrew’s latest book, Abundance: New and Selected Poems, has been shortlisted for the 2021 Australian Christian Book of the Year Award. Published in the United States by Wipf and Stock/Cascade [...]

Vale Hal GP Colebatch, September 2019 More than women, the Norsemen loved longboats,craved the pregnant sail on the prow-ploughed sea.Safeguarded by fearsome spirit-scarer figureheadsthey [...]

Years ago, when I was pastoring a church in Collie, a town in the south-west of Western Australia, I received a phone call from an English professor at a university in Perth. He asked me if I [...]

1 The Contents Her uterus isall she thought of when they said,‘We’ll evacuate …’How could she know they alsomeant the contents of her heart? 2 The Mitigation Surely, she’s guilty,but not only … [...]

A review of Distillations of Different Lands by Andrew Lansdown I met Andrew Lansdown in 1974 when I was trying to teach Creative Writing at Curtin University of Technology and he was the best [...]

by the 16th century poet, Robert Southwell A Child My Choice Let folly praise what fancy loves, I praise and love that ChildWhose heart no thought, whose tongue no word, whose hand no deed [...]

To Hal Colebatch A heaving deck, a sail unfurled,The navigator’s art,Will find the measure of the worldAnd of the human heart. For the seafarer knows his fateDepends on judging trueBoth what the [...]

The Weight of the Baby Marroning, Wellington Weir   I stay behind with the baby while they check the baits— my wife, my children. They are that light skirting the shore.   My new son [...]

  Not in Truce   Above the black soil of the bulldozed paddock spiders have spun their threads on upraised sticks and roots. In the midst of anarchy, a small affirmation of design. The [...]

Retreat   Come unto yourself a while, Be deaf to outer cares; Ask not who wins, who falls, who rages, Or what each doubtful sign presages, Or what face treachery wears.   Soon you must [...]