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.
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Paul Laurence Dunbar
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872 – 1906) was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Much of Dunbar’s popular work was written in Negro dialect, although he also wrote in conventional English. He is considered to be the most important African American poet to have favoured the sonnet form. His final collection Joggin’ Erlong was published in 1906.
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DH Lawrence
David Herbert Lawrence (1885 – 1930) grew up in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, the son of a miner. He travelled widely and wrote many poems during his lifetime, also being the author of several novels, including The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1920) and his last and most infamous novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, published in 1928.
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Faith Lawrence
Faith Lawrence lives in Manchester and is a BBC radio producer. She is researching ‘The Poetics of Listening’ for a Creative Writing PhD at the University of St Andrews, and her poems have been published in various magazines including Poetry Review.
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Gregory Leadbetter
Gregory Leadbetter’s publications include Caliban (Dare-Gales Press, 2023), Balanuve, with photographs by Phil Thomson (Broken Sleep, 2021), Maskwork (Nine Arches, 2020), longlisted for the Laurel Prize 2021, The Fetch (Nine Arches, 2016), and The Body in the Well (HappenStance, 2007). His work for the BBC includes the extended poem Metal City (2023). A song-cycle featuring poems from The Fetch by the composer and pianist Eric McElroy has been performed internationally, and a recording was released in 2023. Gregory also publishes as a critic and his book Coleridge and the Daemonic Imagination won the University English Book Prize 2012. He is Professor of Poetry at Birmingham City University.
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Gill Learner
Gill Learner was born near Birmingham and now lives in Reading. Having worked in the printing trade, she went on to teach printing studies. Since beginning to write poetry in 2001 she has won the Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham Prize and the Buxton Poetry Competition. She has published two full collections: The Agister’s Experiment (2011) and Chill Factor (2016) both with Two Rivers Press.
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Li-Young Lee
Li-Young Lee was born in Indonesia to parents who were Chinese exiles. Early in his life the family moved to the US. His first collection was Rose (BOA Editions, 1985) and his most recent is The Undressing (WW Norton, 2018). His work has been praised for its lyricism and its spareness. Li-Young often uses personal experience or memory as a starting point for the exploration of universal or abstract themes.
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