Publications

Inner self and outer world are inextricable in these poems, while dreams become the new realism. In one poem the narrator survives his own death and visits the office where he spent his days; in another the apparatus of literary criticism is directed away from the poetry and levelled at the poet instead.

Some of these poems are set in the city where Donald Gardner has made his home; but in ‘In Berenstraat’ Amsterdam appears as an archaeological ruin, conveying a sense of exile that is spiritual more than literal. While the dominant mode of these poems is dark comedy, Gardner’s work also sometimes has a lyrical charm or displays a concern for the future of our prematurely aging planet.