Any orders received after 22nd December 2024 will be dispatched on 2nd January 2025

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.

  • Sarah Wardle

    Sarah Wardle was born in London and is a lecturer at Middlesex University. She was Poet in Residence at Tottenham Hotspur Football Club and is the author of several poetry collections, including Fields Away (2003), Score (2005) and Beyond (2014) – all published by Bloodaxe Books.  She has also contributed to various anthologies.

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  • Andrew Waterhouse

    Andrew Waterhouse (1958 – 2001) was a poet, environmentalist and musician who lived and worked in the north east. His poetry collection In (The Rialto 2000) won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. A second volume, 2nd, featuring poems he was gathering into a collection at the time of his death, was published in 2002.

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  • Rory Waterman

    Rory Waterman was born in Belfast and is a British critic, poet and academic. He has published three full poetry collections with Carcanet of which the most recent is Sweet Nothings (2020).  His first collection was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Prize.  He is Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature at Nottingham Trent University where he also leads the Creative Writing MA.

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  • Giles Watson

    Giles Watson was born in the UK but emigrated to Australia at the age of one and lived there for 25 years. He is an author and painter, writing essays on nature, folklore and medieval visual culture. His most recent publication is Saints, Birds and Devils (Lulu, 2023) which pairs poems about the relationships between medieval people and birds with illustrations inspired by the bestiaries. He returned to England in early adulthood, living in Durham, the Isles of Scilly and rural Oxfordshire, before returning to live in Western Australia in 2013. Much of his poetry is redolent of the landscapes of these places.

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  • Jason Watts

    Jason Watts was born in Liverpool and raised in Glasgow where he studied English Literature and Language with Philosophy at the city’s university. A number of his poems have appeared in magazines including Magma, Obsessed With Pipework, Poetry Scotland, Smiths Knoll and Versal, been anthologised in Mr Barton Isn’t Paying and nothing left to burn and been placed or commended in competitions: his poem ‘Irene’ won the Plough Prize (short poem) in 2007, and ‘How You Prepare to Go to Church’ was a runner-up in the 2011 Ragged Raven Press competition. His most recent pamphlet collection, Nothing is Looking was published by Longhouse in Vermont, USA. He lives on the Isle of Arran off the West coast of Scotland with his wife Anne and daughter Connie, where he works as a self-employed handyman.

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  • Stephen Watts

    Stephen Watts is a poet and translator based in East London with family roots in the Italian Alps. He twice came second in the National Poetry Competition and has published numerous full collections, most recently Ancient Sunlight (Enitharmon, 2014). Republic of Dogs / Republic of Birds is a recent prose work, first written on a typewriter in the 1980s and lost for over 30 years before it was finally published by Test Centre Publications.

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