Candlestick Press
Biographies
Here you can find out more about the huge range of poets we feature in our pamphlets and the artists whose work appears on our beautiful covers.
We’ve now published poems by almost 800 historical and contemporary poets. In our pages you’ll find old favourites alongside twenty-first century voices – everyone from WH Auden to Benjamin Zephaniah. Although our emphasis is on British poetry, you’ll also find Irish, American and Australian writers.
We hope these pages will encourage you to explore further the work of a poet you’ve enjoyed in one of our pamphlets.
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Christopher Reid
Christopher Reid was born in 1949 and is the author of a number of award-winning poetry collections, most recently Nonsense and also including Arcadia (1979), Two Dogs on a Pub Roof (1996) and in 2009, A Scattering, which won that year’s Costa Best Book of the Year Award. He also writes poetry for children. From 1991 – 1999 he was poetry editor at Faber and Faber. He gained a Cholmondeley Award in 1983 and the Sunday Times Writer of the Year Award in 1998. He is founder and editor of the literary magazine Areté and Professor Emeritus of New College, Oxford.
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Louisa Rhodes
Louisa Rhodes is a young writer based in South Yorkshire. She is a member of Hive South Yorkshire and her poem ‘Yew Tree’ was first published in the anthology Wild Poetry (Hive South Yorkshire, 2017) which contains poems inspired by flowers and plants. She also writes fiction and a blog.
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Hugh Ribbans
Hugh Ribbans trained at Canterbury College of Art where he specialised in relief printmaking. He now produces woodcuts and linocuts, mixing heavily grained wood – often driftwood – and lino in his prints. His subjects are frequently animals and birds, using a stylised treatment much influenced by ethnic art and his graphic background. He has exhibited at the Barbican Gallery, the National Print Exhibition, the Printmakers Council Open, The Society of Wood Engravers and the Society of Wildlife Artists.
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Maureen Richardson
Maureen Richardson (1943 – 2020) was born in Tyneside and later moved to Nottingham to take up a post as a community worker. It was here that she followed her passion for writing and became a successful Creative Writing Tutor while publishing her own short stories and poems. She was an active environmental campaigner and appeared regularly on radio and TV. In the last years of her life she was an enthusiastic member of Our Dementia Choir which was the subject of a BBC documentary.
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Anne Ridler
Anne Ridler (1912 – 2001) was a poet and librettist, described as “one of the best poets of her generation”. Her first book of poems was published in 1939, while working at Faber and Faber, for a time as assistant to T. S. Eliot. She published ten collections of poetry as well as original and translated opera libretti, including Monteverdi’s Orfeo. She was also the author of verse plays which were performed in Oxford and London. Her Collected Poems (Carcanet Press) were published in 1997 and she was awarded an OBE for services to literature shortly before her death.
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Frances Ridley Havergal
Frances Ridley Havergal (1836 – 1879) was an English religious poet and a prolific hymn writer. Her best-known hymns include ‘Take My Life and Let it Be’ and ‘Thy Life for Me’. She also wrote hymn melodies, religious tracts and works for children. A Poetical Works was published in 1884.
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