Andrew Lansdown

These two new collections are both by, and maybe for, believers. They contain passionate and interrogative poems that argue for and celebrate their respective views of the world. Both poets are, to quote Rosemary Sorensen’s term for Goodfellow on the cover blurb, ‘evangelists’ who wear their respective hearts on their sleeves and who urge or invite assent.

Fontanelle, Andrew Lansdown’s seventh collection, is concerned with the almost ineffable immanent design and intricacy of the natural and experienced world, especially of birds, insects and a young family. The role of the poet here is to explore, describe and celebrate the (almost) sacred in the mundane: ‘The words I’ve been working with / are like running water. All afternoon / I’ve been trying to scoop out / a place for them to settle …’ (‘Home’). Lansdown’s voice is earnest, reverent, wonderstruck. These are Romantic imagist poems in which the poetry defers to the empirical and ontological world: ‘Cicadas have left their cuticles / clinging to the daisy stems: / brown shells, burst at the back / of the thorax’ (‘Emergence’).

The phenomenon of the Fremantle Arts Centre Press in Western Australia is one of the instructive publishing success stories of the past decade.

It is a frankly regional venture, and by concentrating on the local market and the immediate writing scene it has built up a secure base of interest – and sales. Out of a real or imagined (but widespread) sense of slight, or exclusion, has emerged the one thing most likely to resolve that carping insecurity: direct action aimed at self-sufficiency. It is important to recognise this motivating force. But it is important, also, to look at the consequences of that initial do-it-yourself bravado.