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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Annie Kissack
Annie Kissack is from the Isle of Man. A teacher and fluent speaker of Manx Gaelic, she is also a song-writer and performer with her own successful Gaelic choir. Coming late to poetry, in 2018 she won the title of Fifth Manx Bard. Her first poetry collection, Mona Sings was published in 2022 and reflects her interest in the stories, folklore, landscape and languages of her native island.
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Cynthia Kitchen
Cynthia Kitchen is a retired teacher from the North West who has been writing for many years. She has been widely published in anthologies and magazines and has won, been placed and was a runner-up in numerous poetry competitions eg The Bridport Prize 2006, Ver Poets international 1995, Lancaster Literature festivals 88 and 95. Her first collection Uphill and Dangerously was published by Headland Publications in 2008.
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Kenny Knight
Kenny Knight’s work has appeared in a number of literary magazines, including The Rialto and Smith’s Knoll, and his first full-length poetry collection, The Honicknowle Book of the Dead, was published by Shearsman in 2009.
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Stephen Knight
Stephen Knight was born in Swansea and is a poet, novelist and theatre director. His poetry collections include Flowering Limbs (Bloodaxe, 1993) which was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and The Prince of Wails (CB Editions, 2012). His novel, Mr Schnitzel, was published in 2000. Sardines and Other Poems is a collection of poetry for children.
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Sarah Kolawole
Sarah ‘Rain’ Kolawole was born in Nottingham and is a performance poet, spoken word artist and an associate artist at the Nottingham Playhouse theatre. Her first play was Notts Sweet Home which toured with the New Perspectives Theatre company. As a performance poet she has performed alongside artists including Benjamin Zephaniah and Salena Godden. She is also a practising social worker.
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Yusef Komunyakaa
Yusef Komunyakaa was born in 1947 in Louisiana and served in the US Army from 1969-1970 as a correspondent during the Vietnam War, an experience which later became the subject of his poetry collection, Dien Cai Dau (1988). He studied Creative Writing, his first published poetry collection being Dedications & other Darkhorses (1977). He teaches at New York University and his latest collection is The Emperor of Water Clocks (2015).
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