Allsorts: Poetry Tricks and Treats, by Andrew Lansdown

This book is aptly named as it contains all sorts of sweet delights. If you are a teacher feeling a bit lost about teaching poetry in class, or just someone who wants to learn more about the craft of poetry, you will find this book an invaluable tool.

Reviewed by Dale Harcombe

This book is aptly named as it contains all sorts of sweet delights. If you are a teacher feeling a bit lost about teaching poetry in class, or just someone who wants to learn more about the craft of poetry, you will find this book an invaluable tool.

Not only is Andrew Lansdown one of Australia’s best imagist poets, but included in the book are some personal observations about poetry, the best way to write a limerick, where ideas come from and ideas for writing poems as well as outlining different ways of writing e.g. quatrain, haiku, rhymed poem, sonnet or tanka.

Andrew explains techniques such as assonant rhyme, couplets, and alternating rhyme just to name a few and talks about ways of creating sound effects in poems using devices like onomatopoeia or rhyming tercets, and examples of using assonance, imagery or metaphor. To make it even easier for teachers and students of poetry, he has included an index which highlights each poem’s form and poetic techniques. So if you are looking for a ballad, a syllabic poem, a rhyming quatrain, sestet, or a villanelle, it points you in the right direction of examples. The index also highlights specific topics e.g. poems concerning animals, home, imagination, ocean or birds, which Andrew Lansdown is particularly fond of writing about.

Poems are arranged according to colour- the colours of liquorice allsorts. Colours are red, yellow, white, green, orange and black. Some of the poems in this collection are humorous and whimsical, like The Snaffle and There was an African Lion or The Elephant who Lost His Tail. Others are delicate snapshots.  Among my favourites are Fuchsia Wrens, Summer, The Japanese Gardener, Dressed to Kill, Genesis, Christmas Tree and Ball of Gold.

Andrew Lansdown has the knack of showing us that a poem can be about any subject even pesky mosquitoes. He provides plenty of examples to make you think differently about things or to make you laugh or smile. Wombat Books and Studio Journal are to be congratulated for collaborating to produce such a great collection of poems for children and adults to enjoy.

Allsorts: Lightt Hearted Poems for Light Hearted People

Allsorts: Poetry Tricks and Treats, by Andrew Lansdown

Wombat Books

RRP $24.95
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The Red Dragon, by Andrew Lansdown

This is a gripping fantasy full of excitement, adventure and betrayal…

Colyn slipped his hand inside his shirt to touch the scar below his collarbone. The wound from the dragon’s tusk had healed up well, although it was still slightly tender. But the wound to his mind had not so easily healed…He would wake in a sweat, reaching frantically beneath his pillow for his knife.

Colyn, the Rykonc, bears the Kinrye knife of Klarin – the other-world where dragons are feared and slain. Stuck back in his own world, Colyn, longing for the adventure of Klarin, cuts a window between the worlds with his treasured knife and lures a small dragonette and, even worse, a rare red dragon, through to his world causing trouble in both worlds.

This is a gripping fantasy full of excitement, adventure and betrayal. While older readers might long for more, it is still a satisfying read peppered with lovable characters.

The Red Dragon, by Andrew Lansdown
Scholastic, 2006