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.
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Connie Bensley
Connie Bensley lives in London, where she worked as a secretary and medical copywriter. She writes plays, and is also known for her sharply humorous poems, collections of which include Private Pleasures (2007) and Finding a Leg to Stand On: New & Selected Poems 1980-2012 (Bloodaxe, 2012).
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Fiona Benson
Fiona Benson is an English poet living in Devon whose first collection Bright Travellers (Cape, 2014) won the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize. Her second Vertigo & Ghost (Cape, 2019) won the Forward Prize for Best Collection. She began writing as a child and rose to prominence as a Faber New Poet. Her work explores domesticity and women’s experiences, as well as the beauty of the natural world.
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Tara Bergin
Tara Bergin was born in Dublin and came to the UK to undertake academic research. Her first poetry collection This is Yarrow was published by Carcanet in 2013 and won the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize. She wrote her PhD on Ted Hughes and his translations of János Pilinszky and currently teaches Creative Writing at Newcastle University.
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Ciaran Berry
Ciaran Berry was born in Donegal, Ireland and now lives in the US. He has published three poetry collections including most recently Liner Notes (The Gallery Press, 2018). His style is often conversational, but he is able to vividly capture other lives, such as those of wild creatures.
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James Berry
James Berry (1924 – 2017) was a Jamaican poet who settled in Britain in the 1940s. His poetry is notable for using a mixture of standard English and Jamaican Patois. He was at the forefront of championing British/West Indian writing and published numerous poetry collections and books for children in his long life. Bloodaxe published his Selected Poems (A Story I Am In) in 2011.
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Liz Berry
Liz Berry was born in the Black Country and now lives in Birmingham. Her work is recognisable for its distinctive usage of Black Country dialect and vocabulary. Her pamphlet, The Patron Saint of Schoolgirls, was published in 2010 and her debut collection, Black Country (2014), won the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection in 2014.
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