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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John Betjeman
John Betjeman (1906 – 1984) was a popular poet, writer and broadcaster, and passionate defender of Victorian architecture. His Collected Poems was published in 1958 and his verse autobiography, Summoned by Bells, in 1960. He was knighted in 1969, and became Poet Laureate in 1972.
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Kathryn Bevis
Kathryn Bevis’s pamphlet, Flamingo, (Seren) was one of the Poetry Society’s ‘Books of the Year’ for 2022, shortlisted for the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet, and her collection, The Butterfly House, will be published by Seren in 2024. Poems of hers have recently won the Wales Poetry Award, the Crysse Morrison Award, and the Second Light Competition. One of her poems has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem – Written – in 2023.
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Sujata Bhatt
Sujata Bhatt was born in Ahmedabad and grew up in both India and the US, speaking Gujarati as her first language. Her first poetry collection, Brunizem, appeared in 1988 and was first published in the UK by Carcanet in 2008. It won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia) and the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award. Bhatt is bilingual, but her poetry often explores the rich and non-verbal worlds of plants and creatures.
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Ruth Bidgood
Ruth Bidgood was born in 1922 and has been publishing poetry for over fifty years. She served in the Woman’s Royal Naval Service during the Second World War, as a coder in Egypt. A distinguished poet, in 2011 she won the Roland Mathias Prize for her collection Time Being, published by Seren Books.
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Laurence Binyon
Robert Laurence Binyon (1869 – 1943) was an English poet, dramatist and art scholar. He was born to Quaker parents in Lancaster and studied at Oxford, where he was awarded the Newdigate poetry prize. He lived most of his life in London, where he worked at the British Museum before going to war and after his return. His best known work, For the Fallen, is often used in Remembrance Sunday services.
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Julia Bird
Julia Bird grew up in Gloucestershire and now lives in London. Her first poetry collection was Hannah and the Monk published by Salt in 2008, followed by Twenty-Four Seven Blossom in 2013. Her illustrated poetry pamphlet Now You Can Look is published by the Emma Press. She specialises in producing live lit shows and currently works for the Poetry Society.
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