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 800 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.
-
David Constantine
David Constantine was born in Lancashire and is a poet, academic and translator. He is a Fellow of the Queen’s College, Oxford, and co-editor of the literary journal Modern Poetry in Translation. A prolific poet and translator, his poetry collections and translations have won various awards, including The Whitbread Poetry Award in 2002 for Something for the Ghosts and the Corneliu M. Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation for his translation of Hans Magnus Enzenberger’s Lighter Than Air. His Collected Poems was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2004.
Featured in
-
Abby Cook
Abby Cook is an illustrator based in West Sussex. Having graduated in illustration from Falmouth University, she has built a successful career in drawing. She favours traditional media, such as paint, ink and coloured pencils but also uses digital techniques and creates collages. Much of her work relates to the natural world and she has produced numerous illustrations for the UK’s various Wildlife Trusts.
Featured in
-
Wendy Cope
Wendy Cope is one of the country’s most popular poets, known for her humorous poetry and her versatility with poetic form. Her poetry collections are all published by Faber & Faber and include Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (1986); Serious Concerns (1992 ), Two Cures for Love (2008) and Family Values (2012). She has also edited a number of poetry anthologies.
Featured in
-
Josephine Corcoran
Josephine Corcoran is a writer, poet and writing teacher originally from the north west of England and now based in Wiltshire. Her latest poetry collection Love and Stones published in 2023 is set in her local landscape amid the turbulence of the covid pandemic. A play ‘The Songs that Houses Sing – the House in Tamworth Park’ was broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
Featured in
-
Henrietta Cordelia Ray
Henrietta Cordelia Ray (1852 – 1916) was an African-American poet and teacher. Her ode ‘Lincoln’ was read at the unveiling of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington in 1876. In 1893 her poetry collection Sonnets was published by JJ Little & Co and a subsequent collection Poems was published in 1910.
Featured in
-
William Cowper
William Cowper (1731 – 1800) was a poet, hymn-writer and man of letters. His poetry, dealing with nature and everyday life made him a forerunner of the Romantic Movement. His first volume, Poems by William Cowper, of the Inner Temple, published in 1782, received wide acclaim. He also translated Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey into blank verse.
Featured in
