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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James Wright
James Wright (1927 – 1980) is widely considered to be one of the finest American poets of his generation, admired by both critics and fellow poets. He experimented with style and language but his themes – loneliness and alienation – remained the same. He published numerous collections, starting with The Green Wall (Yale University Press, 1957). Above the River: The Complete Poems was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux twelve years after his death.
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Judith Wright
Judith Wright (1915 – 2000) continues to be one of Australia’s best-loved poets. She published more than 50 books and was an active environmentalist and campaigner for Aboriginal land rights. She believed that the poet should be concerned with national and social problems. Her Collected Poems was published in 2017.
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Kit Wright
Kit Wright has written more than twenty-five books for adults and children. He is also the winner of awards such as the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award and (jointly) the Heinemann Award. He was educated at Oxford, and then worked as a lecturer in Canada before returning to England in 1970, where he has remained since.
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Robert Wrigley
Robert Wrigley is an American poet who has published numerous collections, including Anatomy of Melancholy & Other Poems (Penguin, 2013). His work often engages with rural Western landscapes, exploring how humans belong within the natural world. He cites Keats and Wallace Stevens as major influences on his own writing. He lives in Idaho.
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Lynne Wycherley
Lynne Wycherley was born in East Anglia and her widely published poetry is inspired by the haunting landscape of the Fens. Her most recent collections are Poppy in a Storm-Tossed Field (2009) and Listening to Light: New and Selected Poems (2014) both published by Shoestring Press.
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Hedd Wyn
Hedd Wyn (1887 –1917) was a Welsh language poet who was posthumously awarded the bard’s chair at the 1917 National Eisteddfod after being killed in World War I. Born Ellis Humphrey Evans, he was inspired to take the bardic name Hedd Wyn, meaning ‘Blessed Peace’, from the way sunlight penetrated the mist in the Meirionydd valleys.
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