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.
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Tariq Latif
Tariq Latif was born in Pakistan. He studied Physics at Sheffield University before joining the family printing business in Manchester, where he worked for fifteen years. He now works part-time in telephone sales on the West Coast of Scotland, where he takes the landscape as inspiration for his verse. His most recent collection is The Minister’s Garden, published by Arc Publications (2008).
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Paul Laurence Dunbar
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872 – 1906) was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Much of Dunbar’s popular work was written in Negro dialect, although he also wrote in conventional English. He is considered to be the most important African American poet to have favoured the sonnet form. His final collection Joggin’ Erlong was published in 1906.
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Gail Lawler
Gail Lawler has been writing poetry and short stories for pleasure since she was a little girl living in Yorkshire. She was the overall winner of The Dark Poets Club ‘Small Space – Deep Impact, mini challenge 2025’ and also gained joint 3rd place in the John McGivering Poetry Prize 2025, sponsored by the Kipling Society. She is a founding Director of Big River Bakery – a social enterprise in Newcastle that delivers social value into the community.
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DH Lawrence
David Herbert Lawrence (1885 – 1930) grew up in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, the son of a miner. He travelled widely and wrote many poems during his lifetime, also being the author of several novels, including The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1920) and his last and most infamous novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, published in 1928.
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Faith Lawrence
Faith Lawrence lives in Manchester and is a BBC radio producer. She is researching ‘The Poetics of Listening’ for a Creative Writing PhD at the University of St Andrews, and her poems have been published in various magazines including Poetry Review.
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Gregory Leadbetter
Gregory Leadbetter’s publications include Caliban (Dare-Gales Press, 2023), Balanuve, with photographs by Phil Thomson (Broken Sleep, 2021), Maskwork (Nine Arches, 2020), longlisted for the Laurel Prize 2021, The Fetch (Nine Arches, 2016), and The Body in the Well (HappenStance, 2007). His work for the BBC includes the extended poem Metal City (2023). A song-cycle featuring poems from The Fetch by the composer and pianist Eric McElroy has been performed internationally, and a recording was released in 2023. Gregory also publishes as a critic and his book Coleridge and the Daemonic Imagination won the University English Book Prize 2012. He is Professor of Poetry at Birmingham City University.
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