A mighty million!

Candlestick is thrilled to be celebrating its millionth pamphlet sale – a major milestone that was marked by a number of celebrations, including Ten Poems of Light – a pamphlet published in October 2024 which contains the winning poems in a recent competition, alongside a special commission by poet Carole Bromley.

A donation from each sale of Ten Poems of Light will be made to Starlight Children’s Foundation, adding to the £320,000 Candlestick has donated so far to a whole range of charities.

Candlestick publisher Di Slaney reflects on our 16‑year journey:

“One of the reasons for our success is that our themed selections are designed to appeal to popular enthusiasms – everything from running to gardening and sheep to birds. We try to be as inclusive as possible and to offer something that works equally well as a gift and as a replacement for a greetings card.

“Recently we’ve been able to extend our reach into some far-flung corners of the world and we now have stockists in Australia and New Zealand as well as in the US. It makes us very happy to know that our pamphlets are finding their way to so many new readers and we’re always delighted when we receive messages from people who’ve enjoyed one of our titles.”

Editor Kathy Towers adds:

“All the poems in Ten Poems of Light are new – something that reflects another of our aims which is to showcase the work of emerging poets who may not have published a collection. This is also the reason we make open mic opportunities a feature of our online launches whenever we can.”

This year Candlestick published a single-author collection: Jeanette Burton’s Ostriches: Ten Poems about My Dad which has proved tremendously popular. It’s part of the drive to keep the brand moving forward, taking on new challenges and responding to new opportunities.

As well as poetry, Candlestick also publishes short stories by writers including David Belbin and Sean O’Brien and prose essays by writers such as Miriam Darlington and John Lewis-Stempel.

Next year will see a host of new titles on subjects ranging from vegetables to wellbeing. There’ll also be further additions to our popular regional range (Ten Poems from Cornwall, Ten Poems from Yorkshire) and further expansion into new overseas territories.

Here at Candlestick we’re excited by the opportunities that lie ahead and can’t wait to bring our unique ‘instead of a card’ format to even more readers.

Find out more

Read some of the many congratulations messages we’ve received from our editors, poets and artists:

Read Messages

Find out more about the many charities that we support with our pamphlet sales:

Supported Charities