Can a jam tart, a snowflake, or an old chair remember someone better than we can? In In My Mother’s Footsteps by Rachel Peck, read the review to find out.

Book title and author

In My Mother’s Footsteps: Poems of Love & Loss by Rachel Peck and Barbara Dickenson

Genre

Poetry / Contemporary Poetry / Family Memoir in Verse

Sub-genres

• Reflective Poetry
• Memorial Poetry
• Autobiographical Poetry
• Family Poetry
• Nature Poetry
• Lyric Poetry
• Narrative Poetry
• Free Verse
• Haiku and Formal Poetry

Themes

• Mother-daughter relationships
• Family
• Love
• Grief and remembrance
• Childhood
• Memory
• Ageing
• Loss
• Friendship
• Marriage and companionship
• Pets and animal companionship
• Passing of time
• Personal identity
• Writing and creativity
• Christmas and family traditions
• Nature and the seasons
• Resilience
• Everyday moments

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Review

What can a family album look like when the photographs are made of words? In My Mother’s Footsteps: Poems of Love & Loss answers by turning remembered voices, places, routines, celebrations, losses, animals, seasons, and ordinary objects into a record.

The collection has a foundation. Rachel Peck brings together her own poems with those of her late mother, Barbara Dickenson, whose wish to publish her poetry had remained unrealised. The result is not simply a memorial volume. It is also a conversation across generations, showing where the two poets meet and differ.

Barbara’s poems favour rhyme, narrative, and accessible storytelling. They recount childhood, family occasions, holidays, community activities, Christmas traditions, and experiences with illness and healthcare. Rachel’s contributions frequently use varied layouts and forms, including haiku, free verse, acrostics, and sonnets. The contrast gives the collection much of its character: one voice feels like a remembered story being told aloud, while the other pauses over images and emotional detail.

The book’s quality is its attention to the small things that become meaningful later. A childhood toy, a Scrabble game, a family party, a journey by train, a favourite chair, a dog’s behaviour, or the smell of Christmas can become a doorway into memory. This is recognisable. Autobiographical memories are connected to sensory details, which helps explain why apparently minor experiences can remain vivid for decades.

Grief is central, in Rachel’s poems about her mother, father, other relatives, and dogs. The collection does not treat loss as a single dramatic event. Instead, it appears through reminders: a birthday, a Christmas tree, a familiar scent, a photograph, a place, or an everyday ritual. That approach gives the book an honest understanding of how remembrance can operate. A person may be absent while their influence continues to shape routines, language, affection, and identity.

The later nature section provides a useful change of rhythm. Bluebells, woodland, weather, flowers, wildlife, snow, autumn leaves, and the changing seasons create a frame around the personal material. The movement from spring to summer, autumn, and winter also gently echoes the collection’s interest in time, change, ageing, and renewal.

There are places where the poetry is deliberately straightforward rather than formally ambitious, and some rhyming pieces can feel more conventional than Rachel’s freer work. Readers seeking highly experimental contemporary poetry may therefore find parts of the collection less challenging. Those who prefer intimate, accessible verse rooted in lived experience will find a closer match.

This is a book for readers who enjoy personal family histories expressed through poetry, reflective collections, memorial writing, and everyday observations transformed into verse. It is less suited to readers wanting a single continuous narrative or poetry focused on abstraction and formal innovation.

Ultimately, In My Mother’s Footsteps is about what remains. Not only poems, but habits, stories, places, laughter, grief, and ways of seeing can pass from one generation to another. Rachel’s act of publishing her mother’s work becomes part of that inheritance, while her own poems show that the inheritance has continued to evolve.

Content Warning

Death and bereavement; cancer and serious illness; breast-health concerns; grief and emotional distress; references to alcohol; religious and Christian references; romantic relationships and kissing; references to the COVID-19 pandemic; and the death or decline of companion animals.

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