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 700 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.

  • James Tate

    James Tate (1943 – 2015) was an American poet. His first collection was The Lost Pilot (Yale University Press, 1967) an elegy for his father who was shot down over Germany in 1944 when Tate was only four months old. His subsequent poetry rarely drew on his own experiences and he became known for poems characterised by humour and his love of the tall story. He won many awards including the Pulitzer Prize in 1991 for his Selected Poems.

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  • Andrew Taylor

    Andrew Taylor is an Australian poet and academic. He was a founder and the first Chair of the South Australian Writers’ Centre. In 2005 his Collected Poems was published by Salt and further collection The unhaunting was published in 2009.  His work often takes the form of short lyrics but he has also published several book-length poems including The Crystal Absences, the Trout in 1976.

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  • Pete Taylor

    Pete Taylor is a poet, editor and former copywriter who now lives in Cheshire with his wife and two youngest daughters. His work has featured in PN Review, The Rialto and a variety of anthologies. His debut collection of poems and photographs – ting tong tang – was published in 2022 by Open Shutter Press, for whom he recently edited FLORA/FAUNA, a collection of nature poetry and photography. Pete has been shortlisted for the Ginkgo/AONB ‘UK Landscape’ Prize and the Wales Poetry Award, commended in the Acumen Prize, and longlisted in The Rialto/RSPB ‘Nature and Place’ Poetry Competition.

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  • Susan Taylor

    Susan Taylor farmed in Lincolnshire until she was 30 and now lives with her husband on the southern edge of Dartmoor. Her writing draws its moods from the natural world and her most recent collection is A Small Wave For Your Form (Oversteps Books, 2012). She runs regular poetry workshops in Totnes where she lives.

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  • Sara Teasdale

    Sara Teasdale (1844 – 1933) was an American poet whose well-crafted lyrical poetry explores a woman’s changing perspectives on beauty, love, and death. Her final collection Strange Victory was published after she took her own life in 1933.

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  • Kae Tempest

    Kae Tempest is an acclaimed spoken word artist, playwright and novelist who lives in London. In 2014 they released a solo album, Everybody Down, later nominated for a Mercury Award. Their epic narrative poem, ‘Brand New Ancients’, won the 2013 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, and their recent poetry collection, Hold Your Own, was published by Picador.

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