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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Patrick Kavanagh
Patrick Kavanagh (1904 – 1967) was an Irish poet and novelist. His first collection, Ploughman and other poems was published in 1936. Other works include the novel Tarry Flynn (1948) and his long poem, ‘The Great Hunger’. He spent his early life farming in rural Ireland, which inspired much of his work, and later moved to Dublin.
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Jackie Kay
Jackie Kay was brought up in Glasgow. She has published several poetry collections including Darling: New and Selected Poems (2007) and Bantam (Picador, 2017). She has also written the novel, Trumpet (1998), and several collections of short stories. Her memoir, Red Dust Road, about meeting her Nigerian birth father, was published in 2010. She is the third modern Makar (National Poet of Scotland) and also has an MBE.
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Yuri Kazarnovsky
Yuri Kazarnovsky (1905 – 1960) was born in Rostov. In 1927 he was arrested for belonging to a subversive literary circle and spent several years in a succession of prison camps. He published one collection in 1936 which contains the famous poem ‘The Tram’. The poem’s wit and lightness of touch are at odds with the sadness of his life but it has become a much-loved classic.
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John Keats
John Keats (1795 – 1821) was a licensed apothecary, but never practised, devoting his time to poetry. His major works include the poems The Fall of Hyperion and the blank verse epic, Endymion: A Poetic Romance (1818). Many of his most major and well-known works are collected in his third volume, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes and Other poems (1820), which includes his famous Odes. Keats died in Rome in 1821, aged 25. His letters were first published in 1848.
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Corinna Keefe
Corinna Keefe is a poet and freelance writer currently based in the United Kingdom. She has published poems in various journals as well as the anthologies Crossing Lines (Broken Sleep Books, 2021) and Unheard Of (Enthusiastic Press, 2021). She is a former recipient of the Young Catholic Writer Award and was longlisted for the Fish Publishing Poetry Prize in 2021.
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Stephen Keeler
Stephen Keeler is an award-winning poet and memoirist whose work is widely published and anthologised. His poems appear in several Candlestick Press pamphlets and his small collection Scar Tissue won a Coast to Coast to Coast award in 2021. His memoir, 50 Words for Love in Swedish won the People’s Book Prize, 2022/23, and his small collection, They Spoke No English is published by Nine Pens. Stephen has held writing residencies in France and Sweden (where ‘Flametree’ was written). He now lives and writes in York.
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