Description

A paraplegic wakes to find he is the sole survivor of an unknown apocalypse. He decides to survive and spends a year navigating the empty motorways of England to see if he really is the only one left alive. He sets off with only his wheelchair and enough food and medical supplies to last a week. To live beyond that he must adapt and scavenge. Told through a daily account of poems he begins to question his own identity, whether you are disabled if there is no-one to be compared to and what does it mean to want to move forwards.

Publisher Review

A compelling and formally inventive collection of poems that is also a sweeping story, Stephen Lightbown's The Last Custodian chronicles crisis, and questions our ideas of memory, survival. When towns become "laden crematoriums," when tragedy takes everything, at that last moment, last stand: there is still a music. "I have to hear a sound," writes the poet, "even if it's played / to photographs". Coming as it does, in this moment of global pandemic, THE LAST CUSTODIAN will touch many a reader with its unrelenting, questioning, echoing voice. A moving, inimitable book. --Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa