Julie Gardner offers deeply personal insights that elegantly interweave to form emotionally resonant narratives. Remembering’s two main sequences, focusing on her mother and her own late husband, guide the reader through a wide emotional range, from sorrow to tenderness, and on to quiet reflection.

Whether in the hope-filled ‘Intermezzo’ or the quietly poignant ‘Embrace’, Gardner compels the reader to follow through each thread. While the individual poems stand on their own, the full impact of themes like time, legacy and love emerges most powerfully through the cumulative flow of the sequences.

Particularly affecting are the poems dedicated to her husband, Arthur, which leave a lasting impression without ever feeling overstated.

And when at first you began to slow,
in my new-found optimism, I believed
it was me who was getting faster.
(‘A New Year’s Resolution’)

The musically inspired titles that follow Gardner’s mother (‘Da Capo’, ‘Rondo’ and ‘Morendo’) add a layer of rhythm and song echoing the cadence of the poems themselves. There is a quiet innocence to the use of ‘Jack and Jill’ within these poems, who we are allowed to follow and imagine into adulthood, lending the reality of the situation yet more gravity the further you lean into the playful, rhyming lilts. Love and care shape every poem in the pamphlet, which is clear in the call-backs to the two bookending poems from Arthur Gardner himself (‘Blessings’ and ‘Messages’). This gives the feeling of a gently circular,
shared memory we’re revisiting. The moon through the window appears throughout the sequence, becoming the symbol of memories that are at once fleeting and constant, but ever luminous.

What would you say if you could
Come and see me now? I think I know.
You’d whisper blessings, show me how
the moon still shines into my room at night.        (‘For Arthur’)

Review by Nathan Fidler

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