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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James P Lenfestey
James P Lenfestey is an American poet and former journalist based in Minneapolis who has published several collections including A Cartload of Scrolls:100 Poems in the Manner of T’ang Dynasty Poet Han-Shan (Holy Cow! Press, 2007). He chairs the Literary Witnesses poetry programme.
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Jenny Pagdin
Jenny Pagdin’s first collection is The Snow Globe, published by Nine Arches Press in 2024. A pamphlet Caldbeck (Eyewear, 2017) was shortlisted in the Mslexia pamphlet competition. Her poems have been highly commended and shortlisted in the Bridport Prize and published in magazines including Magma, Ambit, The Stand and Ink, Sweat & Tears, as well as in an Emma Press anthology.
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PK Page
PK Page (1916 – 2010) was born in Dorset and emigrated to Canada with her parents as a child. She published novels, poetry, essays and books for children. Her final poetry collection Coal and Roses (Porcupine’s Quill, 2009) was published shortly before her death aged 93. It was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize.
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Mark Pajak
Mark Pajak was born in Merseyside. A pamphlet Spitting Distance was published by Smith Doorstop in 2016. His debut full collection Slide was published by Penguin in 2022 and was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize.
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Jay Parini
Jay Parini is an American writer who has published numerous collections of poetry, as well as novels, biographies and academic texts. His biography of Robert Frost won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for best non-fiction book of the year in 2000. He has also written novels about major literary figures such as Tolstoy and Herman Melville. His most recent poetry collection is New and Collected Poems: 1975 – 2015 (Beacon Press, 2016).
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Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker (1893 – 1967) was an American author and critic known for her wit, who wrote for magazines such as Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. She was a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table but, following the breakup of the circle, Parker travelled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting, where she was placed on the Hollywood Blacklist due to her left-leaning politics.
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