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 850 historical and contemporary poets. In our pages you’ll find old favourites alongside twenty-first century voices – everyone from WH Auden to Belinda Zhawi. 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.-
Zaffar Kunial
Zaffar Kunial is a British poet born in Birmingham who now lives in Yorkshire. He published a pamphlet in the Faber New Poets series in 2014 and was Poet-in-Residence at the Wordsworth Trust the same year. In 2011 he won third prize in the National Poetry Competition with ‘Hill Speak’. For several years he worked as a writer for Hallmark Cards.
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Stanley Kunitz
Stanley Kunitz (1905 – 2006) became the tenth US Poet Laureate at the age of ninety-five. In 1959 he also received a Pulitzer Prize for his Selected Poems. A final volume Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected encompasses much of Kunitz’s later work, including nine new poems of which one is ‘The Wellfleet Whale’ addressing a finback whale run aground. This last book won a National Book Award.
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Theophilus Kwek
Theophilus Kwek currently lives in Singapore and began writing when he was a student at Raffles Institution. He has published three poetry collections, most recently Giving Ground (Ethos Books, 2016). He is a co-Editor of Oxford Poetry and also co-edited Flight, an anthology of poetry in response to the European refugee crisis, published by the Oxford Students’ Oxfam Group.
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Vanessa Lampert
Vanessa Lampert is a writer, mentor, editor and teacher of poetry. Her work is widely published. She runs workshops nationwide for adults and in schools and volunteers at Oxford Poetry Library. She was a co-founder of The Alchemy Spoon magazine. A pamphlet On Long Loan was published by Live Canon in 2020 and her full collection Say It With Me by Seren in 2023. Poems included have been published in the Daily Telegraph poem of the week and the Forward Prizes anthology.
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John Lancaster
John Lancaster is author of six poetry collections including The Barman (Smith/Doorstop), Potters: A Division Of Labour (Longmarsh Press, 2017) winner of the inaugural Arnold Bennett Book Prize 2017 and Where The Trent Rises (Clayhanger Press, 2023). A runner-up in the National Poetry Competition, he continues to be widely published in The North, Acumen, Poetry Salzburg, Pennine Platform, The Frogmore Papers, Under The Radar, Orbis and The Alchemy Spoon. Jazz trombonist, he lives in Totnes, Devon.
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Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin (1922 – 85) was a major British poet famed for his “piquant mixture of lyricism and discontent” (Jean Hartley, Marvell Press). Born in Coventry, he studied English at the University of Oxford, and worked as a librarian, most notably at the library of the University of Hull from 1955. His collection of poetry, The North Ship (1945), The Less Deceived (1955), The Whitsun Weddings (1965) and High Windows (1974), established him as a leading and much-loved poet, despite his relatively slim output. He was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1965 and offered – though he declined the offer – the post of Poet Laureate in 1984.
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