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.

  • 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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  • Liz Kendall

    Liz Kendall lives in Surrey where she works as a Shiatsu and massage practitioner and Tai Chi Qigong teacher. She studied English Literature at university and is currently collaborating on a book about food plants with an artist and ethno-botanist. She is also developing her own collections of poetry, essays and wild food recipes.

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  • Nairn Kennedy

    Nairn Kennedy is a Leeds-based poet whose work has appeared in Orbis, Ink Sweat & Tears, The London Magazine, Stand, The North, Spelt and Under the Radar. He’s been a runner-up in the Ilkley Literature Festival Competition, longlisted in the National Poetry Competition, and highly commended in the Bridport, amongst others.

    nairnkennedypoet.co.uk

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  • Brendan Kennelly

    Brendan Kennelly, described by the Irish Times as ‘the balladeer of our age’, was born in County Kerry in 1936. He has published over 30 books of poetry, alongside plays, novels and criticism. For thirty years he was Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College, Dublin. His poems are full of people and voices, and music is an abiding theme. His Selected Poems was published by Bloodaxe in 2011.

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  • Jane Kenyon

    Jane Kenyon (1947 – 1995) was an American poet and translator. During her lifetime she published four collections of poetry and spent many years translating the work of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova.

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