Candlestick Press – 'Instead of a card' poetry pamphlets | UK based independent publisher

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.

  • Stuart Pickford

    Stuart Pickford is the recipient of an Eric Gregory award. His first collection The Basics (Redbeck Press, 2001) was shortlisted for the Forward Best First Collection Prize. His second collection Swimming with Jellyfish was published by Smith/Doorstop in 2016. He lives in Harrogate and taught in a local comprehensive school.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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