Fraught with fatal mishaps and disastrous near misses, the missions of the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States defined an era and exemplified the global socio-political conflict of the Cold War. The Lost Cosmonauts by Ken Hunt is an elegy to humanity's fledgling efforts to explore outer space, and to those who lost their lives in pursuit of this goal.

This wide-ranging collection of poems looks deep into the largely unexplored cosmos for experiences of the sublime, not only in celestial bodies and mythical figures among the stars, but also in those astronauts and cosmonauts who dared to explore them.

Ken Hunt's writing has appeared in Chromium Dioxide, No Press, Matrix, and Freefall. For three years, Ken served as managing editor of N?D Magazine, and for one year, as poetry editor of filling Station. Ken holds an MA in English from Concordia University and is the founder of Spacecraft Press, an online publisher of experimental writing inspired by science and technology. The LUMA Foundation published his first book of poetry, Space Administration, in 2014. His second book of poetry, The Lost Cosmonauts, was published in the fall of 2018. Ken is a PhD candidate at the University of Western Ontario.

Ken Hunt's profile page

“In concept, ambition and technique, The Lost Cosmonauts is absolutely stunning in every way. Delivering beautiful and engrossing poems on a weighty subject with a light touch, Hunt’s lines “(shatter) our atmosphere in fugues of grinding fire.” —Winnipeg Free Press

“Engaging with a mythopoeia of the space race and showing an impressive control over poetic form and history, The Lost Cosmonauts is vital reading for those interested in the history and mythic significance of humanity’s explorations into space.” —The Malahat Review