Celebration and Beyond
Distillations of Different Lands
by Andrew Lansdown
Sunline Press, 2018, 144 pages, $25
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I met Andrew Lansdown in 1974 when I was trying to teach Creative Writing at Curtin University of Technology and he was the best student in the class by a country mile. It was obvious that he had enrolled in the class not because it was easy but because he genuinely wanted to improve his writing skills. His voice was original and absolutely sincere.
Since then he has published a best-selling series of fantasy books in the US, two collections of short stories and fifteen books of poetry and verse as well as other work. Readers of Quadrant will be familiar with his poetry. He has combined what would be a more-than-respectable body of work for a full-time writer with a career as a Baptist minister and teacher. His religious sensibility as a theologian has given a special depth to his poetry, especially the celebratory poetry, and given it—even the short and humorous…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins