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.

  • Jacob Polley

    Jacob Polley was born in Carlisle, Cumbria. He has published a novel and four collections of poetry, including most recently Jackself (Picador, 2016) which won the TS Eliot Prize. His poetry is characterised by a lyric intensity, often harnessing strange and unsettling aspects of the natural world. His work also contains elements of folklore, riddle and nursery rhyme.

    Featured in

  • Bethany W Pope

    Bethany W Pope is an award-winning British-American writer who currently lives in China. Pope’s work includes the poetry collections A Radiance (Cultured Llama, 2012), Undisturbed Circles (Lapwing, 2014).  In 2016 Indigo Dreams published a poetry collection The Rag and Boneyard and a novel entitled Masque.

    Featured in

  • Jessie Pope

    Jessie Pope (1868 – 1941) was an English poet, writer and journalist based in Leicester and best known for her patriotic poetry encouraging enlistment in World War One. Her work came under scrutiny from poets such as Wilfred Owen, who dedicated his poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ (1917) to her in direct response. She was a regular contributor to The Daily Mail, The Daily Express and Vanity Fair, and also wrote for children. Her poems are sometimes used in schools as a contrast to the work of war poets such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.

    Featured in

  • Katrina Porteous

    Katrina Porteous was born in Aberdeen and now lives in Northumbria. She is a poet, historian and broadcaster and is perhaps best known for her innovative radio-poetry. Her work engages with ideas of nature and place. She is President of the Northumbrian Language Society and has written several poetry collections, including most recently Two Countries (Bloodaxe 2014).

    Featured in

  • Peter Porter

    Peter Porter (1929 – 2010) was Australian by birth but lived in Britain for most of his life. After his first collection of poetry was published in 1961, he published sixteen collections as well as holding Writer-in-Residence positions at several universities. He was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, won the Duff Cooper and the Whitbread prizes.

    Featured in

  • Jack Powers

    Jack Powers founded the Stone Soup poetry reading series in Boston in 1971, where many famous U.S. poets, including Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Robert Bly, performed their work. He was known for nurturing new talent and published many new poets under the name Stone Soup.

    Featured in