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 over 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.
  • Charlotte Smith

    Charlotte (Turner) Smith (1749 – 1806) wrote her first book of poetry, Elegiac Sonnets (1784), in debtor’s prison. She wrote to support her children, and also published children’s books and novels, including Emmeline (1788); but saw herself first and foremost as a poet. Beachy Head and Other Poems was published in 1807. Praised by both Wordsworth and Coleridge, she is now recognised as an important Romantic writer.

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  • Gill Smith

    Gill Smith is an American poet living in New York. His work has been widely published in journals and he also produces poetry videos for the series Poeta. He teaches creative writing at The City University of New York.

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  • Maggie Smith

    Maggie Smith is an American poet, writer, editor tand teacher based in Columbus, Ohio. She has published several books of poetry and prose, including Good Bones (Tupelo Press, 2017) and a memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, which was a New York Times bestseller. Poems and essays have also appeared in The Guardian, the Paris Review and the anthology The Best American Poetry.

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  • Stevie Smith

    Stevie Smith (1902 – 1971) lived all her life in Palmer’s Green, North London, and wrote fiction and poetry. Her several collections of poetry were often accompanied by her own quirky line drawings and throughout the 1960s she was a popular performer of her work.

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  • Tracy K Smith

    Tracy K Smith is currently US Poet Laureate and teaches creative writing at Princeton University. She has published several poetry collections, including Life on Mars which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2011 and Wade in the Water (Penguin, 2018) which was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize in the UK. Her memoir Ordinary Light explores ideas of race, faith and her own creativity.

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  • Liz Soar

    Liz Soar (b 1976) studied French at New College, Oxford and now teaches English at Headington School in Oxford.  Her poem ‘She’s a game old bird’ was written on Claire Askew’s ‘Creatrix’ course with the Poetry School.

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