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.
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Kelley Swain
Kelley Swain is from Rhode Island; she cut her teeth as a writer in London and Oxford for over a decade and now lives in Tasmania. She is the author of three poetry collections, two novels and a memoir. Her work emphases the history of science and medicine, and she was one of the first three poets-in-residence at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in 2016. In 2019, poems from her first collection debuted as a song cycle, Endless Forms Most Beautiful. Her forthcoming novel, Ophelia Swam, is set in Oxford.
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Algernon Swinburne
Algernon Swinburne (1837 – 1909) was born in London and spent most of his childhood on the Isle of Wight. He was involved with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, after meeting Dante Gabriel Rosetti at Oxford University. A radical character, he was a poet, playwright, novelist and critic, who invented the poetic ‘roundel’ form. His books include three series of Poems and Ballads and Atalanta in Calydon (1865).
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Michael Symmons Roberts
Michael Symmons Roberts is the author of several collections of poetry, including Drysalter (2013), winner of both the Costa Poetry Prize and the Forward Prize for Poetry. He is also a novelist and librettist who has worked extensively with composer James Macmillan on operas, song cycles and choral works. He is a Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.
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Arthur Symons
Arthur Symons (1865 – 1945) was a British poet, translator and critic. He was born in Wales but spent most of his life in London. A two-volume collected Poems appeared in 1902, after which he wrote almost nothing due to ill health. His work explores love, loss and the passage of time. His seminal book The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899) introduced Symbolism to a British readership.
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George Szirtes
George Szirtes was born in Budapest and left Hungary in 1956. His first book, The Slant Door, was published in 1979 and won the Faber Memorial Prize. Since then he has published numerous collections, including Reel which won the TS Eliot Prize in 2015 and, most recently, Mapping the Delta (Bloodaxe, 2016). He has also translated poetry, fiction and other work, chiefly from Hungarian. He teaches at the University of East Anglia.
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Wislawa Szymborska
Wislawa Szymborska (1923 – 2012) was a Polish poet, essayist and translator who won the Nobel Prize in 1996. Her poetry examines domestic details and occasions, playing these against the backdrop of history. Collections that have been translated into English include Monologue of a Dog (2005).
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