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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David Belbin
David Belbin (b. 1958) was born in Sheffield but has lived in Nottingham since completing his degree at Nottingham University. He is a popular short story writer and the author of numerous novels for young adults. His short stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies and many are published in Provenance: New and Collected Stories from Shoestring Press. David teaches creative writing at Nottingham Trent University.
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Jo Bell
Jo Bell is a poet, tutor and mentor. She was born in Sheffield and until 2015 was the first Canal Laureate, appointed by The Poetry Society and the Canal & River Trust. She has published several collections of poetry, including most recently Kith (Nine Arches Press, 2015).
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Valerie Bence
Valerie Bence’s first pamphlet Falling in love with a dead man was published by Cinnamon Press (2019). The poems are sourced in Rembrandt artworks and he is with her every day, in the form of a tattoo. Overlap, her second pamphlet was published in 2022 by the Emma Press . She has been shortlisted for the Poetry School/Nine Arches Press Primers, Fish Poetry prize, longlisted for the Ginkgo Prize and had a poem in the inaugural issue of Eat the Storms in 2022. She is a Mum and Nonna and lives and works in Buckinghamshire.
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Connie Bensley
Connie Bensley lives in London, where she worked as a secretary and medical copywriter. She writes plays, and is also known for her sharply humorous poems, collections of which include Private Pleasures (2007) and Finding a Leg to Stand On: New & Selected Poems 1980-2012 (Bloodaxe, 2012).
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Fiona Benson
Fiona Benson is an English poet living in Devon whose first collection Bright Travellers (Cape, 2014) won the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize. Her second Vertigo & Ghost (Cape, 2019) won the Forward Prize for Best Collection. She began writing as a child and rose to prominence as a Faber New Poet. Her work explores domesticity and women’s experiences, as well as the beauty of the natural world.
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Tara Bergin
Tara Bergin was born in Dublin and came to the UK to undertake academic research. Her first poetry collection This is Yarrow was published by Carcanet in 2013 and won the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize. She wrote her PhD on Ted Hughes and his translations of János Pilinszky and currently teaches Creative Writing at Newcastle University.
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