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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Carola Luther
Carola Luther grew up in South Africa and moved to England in 1981. She works in Leeds and lives in the Yorkshire Pennines. Her first collection Walking the Animals was published by Carcanet in 2004 and was nominated for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her follow-up Arguing with Malarchy (2011) features poems of landscape and others which explore how animals and humans communicate without language.
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Thomas Lux
Thomas Lux (1946 – 2017) was an American poet who published fourteen collections of poetry and is known for his direct, plain-speaking style. His first collection was Memory’s Handgrenade (Pym-randall, 1972) and To the Left of Time (Houghton Mifflin, 2016) was his last. His early work was influenced by surrealism but he became more interested in human experience and his later poems explore the sorrows and absurdities of being alive.
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Claire Lynn
Claire Lynn teaches Creative Writing around Northumberland. Her poems have been placed in various competitions including the Bridport Prize (1999) and Wasafiri (2017), published in various anthologies including Virago’s The Nerve, and magazines such as Butcher’s Dog. Her poem Sixteen Summers was commissioned by the Ilkley Literature Festival 2022 and Crossing to Lindisfarne is currently (2024-25) displayed on a poster at Longbenton Metro station in Newcastle upon Tyne. She won the Mist and Mountain International Poetry Prize in 2023.
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George MacBeth
George MacBeth (1932 – 1992) was a prolific writer who was born in Scotland, lived most of his life in England and died in Ireland. He worked for many years at the BBC as a producer of poetry programmes. His Selected Poems edited by Anthony Thwaite was published by Enitharmon in 2002. Like his contemporary Ted Hughes, his poetry often engages fiercely with the creatures of the natural world.
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Norman MacCaig
Norman MacCaig (1910 – 1996) was a renowned Scottish poet who was born in Edinburgh and subsequently divided his time between there and Assynt in the West Highlands. He registered as a conscientious objector during the Second World War and remained a lifelong pacifist. His first collection of poetry was published in 1943. In 1985 he was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. He was made an OBE in 1979.
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Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid (C.M. Grieve) (1892 – 1978) was Scotland’s most influential and controversial writer in the 20th century. He urged and enabled the regeneration of all aspects of Scotland’s literature and culture through his poetry, polemical writing and political activity. A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926) is generally regarded as Scotland’s masterpiece of modernism.
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