My research focuses on the relationship between poetry and forms of political commitment and social struggle. My first book, Barry MacSweeney and the Politics of Post-War British Poetry (2017), traced the fate of socialist modernism between the founding of the welfare state and the emergence of New Labour. My second, Living in History: Poetry in Britain, 1945-1979 (2024), explores the legacy of Empire and liberation struggles around race, class, gender, and sexuality in a series of adjacent authorships and poetry scenes.

One of the central strands of my work involves the editing and recovery of materials belonging to variously marginalised or ‘forgotten’ figures. These projects have included extensive work on the queer Romany poet Mark Hyatt (1940-1972); the African American poet and novelist Alfred Celestine (1949-2009); and the archives of the Anglo-Greek poet Iliassa Sequin (1938-2019). I continue to be interested in the material conditions of the production, circulation and reception of poetry outside official channels and institutions.

I have also worked on the crossovers between poetry and visual art. This includes a co-edited reissue of Cecilia Vicuña’s response to the 1973 military coup in Chile, Saborami: An Expanded Facsimile (2024), along with essays on the xerox artist Pati Hill, the poet and painter Etel Adnan, and a reissue of the sound artist Lily Greenham’s Tune into Reality! (1974/2022).

My own poetry has been published widely in the UK and North America. My books include Beginning to End (2027) and Home Radio (2021), along with many chapbooks. I have written two books of poet’s prose: Bad Omens (2026) and Glacial Decoys (2021). With Amy Tobin, I run the small press Distance No Object, which publishes new work by younger poets alongside occasional archival projects.

I often write for New Left Review/Sidecar, and have appeared on BBC Radio. I have given readings at the Tate Modern, Camden Arts Centre, and various other venues. In 2023 I curated an exhibition about Mark Hyatt at Foyle’s Bookshop on the Charing Cross Road, for the publication of Love, Leda (Peninsula Press / Nightboat).

Research interests and PhD supervision

I am particularly interested in archival projects about poetry and leftist political struggle, poetry and sexuality, and fresh approaches to the broader field of experimental art and literature.

Recent PhD students have worked on, or are working on, lesbian literary networks; activist responses to Section 28; the poet and bookseller Bill Butler; and the work of Iliassa Sequin.

Teaching

Poetry and Poetics; Modernism; British and American Poetry; Contemporary Writing

Selected publications

• Beginning to End (Nightboat, 2027)
• Bad Omens (Book Works, 2026)
• Living in History: Poetry in Britain, 1945-1979 (Edinburgh University Press, 2024)
• Cecilia Vicuña, Saborami: An Expanded Facsimile, ed. by Luke Roberts and Amy Tobin (Book Works, 2024)
• Mark Hyatt, So Much For Life: Selected Poems, ed. by Sam Ladkin and Luke Roberts (Nightboat, 2023)