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.

  • Laura Theis

    Laura Theis’ work appears in Poetry, Oxford Poetry, Magma, Rattle, Aesthetica, iamb, etc. Her Elgin-Award-nominated debut how to extricate yourself (2020), an Oxford Poetry Library Book-of-the-Month, won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize. A Spotter’s Guide To Invisible Things (2023) received the Live Canon Collection Prize and the Society of Authors’ Arthur-Welton-Award. Other accolades include the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, Poets & Players Prize, Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize, AM Heath Prize, and Mogford Prize. Her new collection Introduction to Cloud Care and her children’s debut Poems from a Witch’s Pocket are both forthcoming in 2025.

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  • Dylan Thomas

    Dylan Thomas (1914 – 1953) was a leading Welsh poet and writer, many of whose poems remain very well known and popular.  These include  ‘Fern Hill’, ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ and ‘And Death Shall Have No Dominion’. His play for voices, ‘Under Milk Wood’, is also widely known and loved.

    dylanthomas.com

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  • Edward Thomas

    Edward Thomas (1878 – 1917) was an Anglo-Welsh writer of reviews, literary criticism, biography and fiction, who turned to poetry in 1914, and is best remembered for his evocative poems about the English countryside. He was killed in action in the First World War.

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  • RS Thomas

    RS Thomas (1913 – 2000) was a passionate advocate of Welsh nationalism and a major European poet.   He was ordained as a priest in the Anglican Church of Wales in 1936 and had written three collections of poetry before his breakthrough to a wider audience in 1955 with the publication of Song at the Year’s Turning.  Reflecting wild and remote areas of countryside in Wales, his poetry is admired for its spiritual, spare and lyrical qualities.

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  • Frances Thompson

    Frances Thompson is a poet and short story writer from Dundee who is also a volunteer Sensory Storyteller. She loves to write descriptive poetry, children’s stories, thriller/horror stories and also stories that are imaginative, fun and quirky. She is inspired by her partner, her friends, her cats, Simba and Coco, the places she visits and the creative groups she attends which include drama and creative writing.

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  • Marvin Thompson

    Marvin Thompson was born in London to Jamaican parents and teaches English in South Wales. His full collection Road Trip was published by Peepal Tree Press in 2020 and was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. His work has also been published in The Poetry Review and Poetry Wales. He has an MA in Creative Writing.

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