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.

  • Vic Pickup

    Vic Pickup is a poet, writer and researcher based in Hampshire. Her poetry collections include Lost & Found (Hedgehog Press, 2020) and The Omniscient Tooth Fairy (Indigo Dreams, 2023). She is the co-organiser of Poets’ Café Reading and Reading Stanza group.

    Featured in

  • Katherine Pierpoint

    Katherine Pierpoint is a British Poet who studied languages at Exeter University. Her best-know poetry collection is Truffle Beds (Faber, 1995) which was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and won a Somerset Maugham Award. Her poem ‘Buffalo Calf’ won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2005.

    Featured in

  • Robert Pinsky

    Robert Pinsky is an American poet and critic. His most recent books include At the Founding Hospital (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016) and Selected Poems (2012). He was US Poet Laureate from 1997 – 2000. As Laureate he set up the ‘Favorite Poem Project’ which saw people from all walks of life selecting and recording a reading of their favourite poem. An anthology Americans’ Favorite Poems: The Favorite Poem Project Anthology proved highly successful.

    Featured in

  • Ruth Pitter

    Emma Thomas ‘Ruth’ Pitter (1897 – 1992), CBE, FRSL was a British poet who published eighteen poetry collections in her lifetime and was the first woman to receive the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, in 1955. She was appointed a CBE in 1979 to honour her many contributions to English literature.

    Featured in

  • Stanley Plumly

    Stanley Plumly was a prolific American poet who loved the English Romantics and wrote a book about John Keats. His 2009 collection Old Heart (2009) won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a finalist in the National Book Award. He was Maryland Poet Laureate for many years.

    Featured in

  • Rachel Plummer

    Rachel Plummer is a UK poet who was born in London and lives in Edinburgh. She was a recipient of the Scottish Book Trust’s New Writer Award for poetry in 2016 and has had poems published in magazines including Mslexia, The Dark Horse, The Stinging Fly and Agenda.  Her pamphlet of sci-fi poems The Parlour Guide to Exo-Politics (House Press, 2017) imagines aliens landing in Scotland’s ancient woodland and explores themes such as gender and homelessness.

    Featured in