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.

  • Zoë Walkington

    Zoë Walkington has had poetry published in Magma, Hinterland, Strix and The North. She was one of the winners of the Poetry Business International Pamphlet Competition in 2022 with her debut pamphlet I hate to be the one to tell you this. Her second pamphlet Missing Person is due out in April 2026, published by Smith Doorstop.

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  • Peter Wallis

    Peter Wallis is Poet in Residence at his local allotments and is currently collaborating on a project, Poets as Gardeners. He is author of Half Other (The Hippocrates Press, 2023) and Articles of Twinship (Bare Fiction, 2015). He has been a Jessie Kesson Finalist Fellow at Moniack Mhor, and a Hawthornden Fellow. He is Submissions Editor for the UK charity Poems in the Waiting Room and was a prize-winner in the National Poetry Competition 2016.

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  • Polly Walshe

    Polly Walshe is a poet and novelist originally from London. Her poems have been published in magazines including: PN Review, Acumen, The London Magazine, 14 Magazine, Shearsman, Pennine Platform, The Frogmore Papers and The Spectator.

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  • George Walter Thornbury

    George Walter Thornbury (1828 – 1876) was a British author and the first biographer of JMW Turner. He worked as a journalist but also wrote poetry, novels and art criticism. His first success came with the publication in 1851 of Lays and Legends; or, Ballads of the New World. He also wrote about London which was the city where he was born and spent all his life.

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  • Peter Walton

    Peter Walton is an English poet whose work engages closely with the natural world, especially with plants and birds. His full collection The Cheerfulness of Sparrows and Other Poems was published by Shoestring Press in 1998.

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  • Rob Walton

    Scunthorpe-born Rob Walton now has a home and an allotment in Whitley Bay.  He writes poetry and short fiction for children and adults, and has been published by Arachne Press, Candlestick Press, The Emma Press and others.  He makes regular visits to schools, libraries and festivals.

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