Beginning to End - by Luke Roberts (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Beginning to End is a book of mourning and renewal by UK poet and critic Luke Roberts.

In this series of elegiac and enigmatic lyrics, Luke Roberts follows the non-linear work of mourning, the changed dimensions of self and world altered when faced with loss. Remembered landscapes blur through car windows while images flicker in our peripheral vision and disappear. Broken apart and pieced back together, these forty poems--including longer exploratory forms--are built from the remains of grief's language, checking to see what works in the aftermath. "I was engaged in embarrassing survival," writes the poet. "With my eyes closed wanted it for everyone."

Review Quotes

"Luke Roberts' Glacial Decoys (Boise, ID: Free Poetry) is a subterranean tour de force in balancing the discursive and the immersive."

--The White Review

"Themselves fragmentary, often sharp and jagged, the essays in "Glacial Decoys" are collected with care, tenderness, and even humor."

--Kylan Rice, Colorado State

About the Author

Luke Roberts was born in 1987 and grew up in rural Cumbria. He is the author of Bad Omens (2026), Home Radio (2021), Glacial Decoys (2021), and other works of poetry and prose. His criticism has been published widely, and includes, Living in History: Poetry in Britain, 1945-1979 (2024). He is a regular contributor to New Left Review/Sidecar, and his writing has appeared in TLS, PN Review, and elsewhere. As an editor, he has been involved in archival publications by Mark Hyatt, Iliassa Sequin, and Cecilia Vicuña. With Amy Tobin he runs the small press Distance No Object. He lives and works in London.