This mini anthology is a wonderful introduction to the countless poems written about fathers and fatherhood. Father William is present, of course, a feisty figure who reminds us that age is entitled to have the last word. There’s affection and humour, alongside tender remembrance. In one poem a father carries his young daughter on his shoulders after a trip to the pantomime and realises how precious such moments are: “And I clutch you tightly for fear you blow away For fear you grow up to soon …. … And sensing this, I hold you tighter still.” from ‘Cinders’ by Roger McGough. Just as important are the everyday happenings that become special with hindsight: a family meal at which a dad contends with a hot potato, or the nightly ritual of an ageing father who insists on turning off the water before he goes to bed in case a pipe bursts while he’s asleep. Poems by Coral Bracho, Lewis Carroll, Louise Glück, Tony Harrison, Tariq Latif, Joanne Limburg, Roger McGough, Shazea Quraishi, Michael Rosen and Siriol Troup.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 20

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-03-2012

Where would we be without families, to lift us up and love us, to make us who we are? This anthology celebrates all of the humour and warmth, the strength and joy, that families bring us. We meet a doting grandfather who makes a car out of sand for his granddaughter on the beach, spend time at a ghostly Christmas family gathering, even hear of a little girl who keeps playing the video of a sister’s birth on rewind. Elsewhere, writers reflect on the way family links us across history: “I want to enter the picture, slip myself into 1903, climb into the dresses and sit on the porch, become each woman, touch the baby, find the unborn daughter I will be.” from ‘Generation’ by Cathy Stern. This charming, moving selection of poems explores the many things that ‘family’ can mean, in lines which, like families, offer us cuddles and giggles, personality and love. Poems by Fleur Adcock, Jeanette Burton, Jonathan Edwards, Jackie Kay, Vanessa Lampert, John McCullough, Sinéad Morrissey, Cathy Stern, RS Thomas and Marvin Thompson.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 24

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-10-2022

In this wonderful mini-anthology of poems celebrating brothers (a companion to Ten Poems about Sisters) we meet brothers of all ages and of all shapes and sizes, including the brother who: “has made, out of petrol and hormones, a little world for himself, a paradise of hang-gliders and cars;” from ‘My Lost Brother’ by Ben Scammell. There’s also a young brother who loves riding down the stairs on a tea-tray and teenage brothers who are so alike they even smell the same. There are brothers who grow up and disappear into a new life, living on vividly in the memories of those left behind. The relationship with a brother can be a complex one, and these poems explore those joys and challenges in fascinating ways. But most of all they reflect the abiding love we feel for a brother and show how this can enrich a life. Poems by Matthew Dickman, Jonathan Edwards, Lavina Greenlaw, Joanne Limburg, Hannah Lowe, Rebecca McClanahan, Rob Miles, Mary O’Donnell, Ben Scammell and Floyd Skloot.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 20

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-10-2017

INCLUDES POSTCARDS Kindness can be an underestimated virtue in our increasingly hectic and impersonal world. It is a word that we use most often in our conversations with young children when we tell them to be kind to a fellow creature or a new friend. These generous poems remind us that kindness can take many forms and that a kind gesture doesn’t have to be either time-consuming or complicated. On the contrary: “Sometimes a sober voice is enough to calm the waters & drive away the false witnesses,” from ‘Kindness’ by Yusef Komunyakaa. Edited by Jackie Kay and containing two new poems she has written specially for the anthology, this moving selection is allied to a compelling cause. ‘Felix’s Campaign of Kindness’ was instigated by the mother of Felix Alexander, a 17-year-old boy who took his own life after years of online bullying. The pamphlet is dedicated to the memory of Felix and contains the inspirational open letter written by his mother after his death. Jackie Kay is one of the foremost poets writing in Britain today. She has published numerous poetry collections and a memoir, Red Dust Road, about her quest to find her birth parents. She was the third modern Makar, the Scottish Poet Laureate. Included are two special edition postcards featuring poems by Olga Dermott-Bond and Zoë Green, who were the winners in our Kindness Poem Competition. Poems by Fleur Adcock, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ian Duhig, Sarah Howe, Jackie Kay, Yusef Komunyakaa, Norman MacCaig, Sylvia Plath, Rabindranath Tagore and Kae Tempest.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 28

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-09-2023

Sunshine and showers, cuckoos, frogs, daffodils and cherry blossom…. Poets writing about spring certainly have no shortage of material. Our selection of poems takes in many of these yearly delights. There are contemporary voices – a poem in which a dog sniffs around a city park and enjoys the new smells, and another where an “immortal frog” seems to promise the speaker fresh hope and a return to good health. In a poem from the nineteenth century, spring is a time of renewal when the world is restored to its original beauty: “What is all this juice and all this joy? A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning…” from ‘Spring’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins. This delightful mini-anthology provides a taste of the countless ways in which this most uplifting of seasons has been celebrated in verse over the centuries. Poems by Thomas Carew, John Clare, Nichola Deane, Emily Dickinson, Valerie Gillies, Gerard Manley Hopkins, AE Housman, Edna St Vincent Millay, Jessica Mookherjee and Alicia Ostriker.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 20

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-03-2020

Many of us have a favourite tree. It may be one we remember from childhood – a tree we loved to climb in or swing from or hide behind. Or perhaps it’s one of the ancient and majestic yews or oaks that stand sentinel in churchyards and on village greens, hardly seeming to change as the human years hurry by. This beautiful selection celebrates the glory and mystery of all manner of trees – from David Constantine’s apple tree clothed in frost to Alistair Elliot’s birch waving its ‘delicate hair’ in the breeze. “I’m thankful to the trees outside my window” says Moniza Alvi at the beginning of her quietly rhapsodic poem of the same name. This is tree-love of the everyday kind – the simple pleasure of looking out on a garden from which familiar trees look back. We can almost imagine they’re keeping us company. Poems by Moniza Alvi, Paul Batchelor, David Constantine, Alistair Elliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins, DH Lawrence, Kim Moore, Louisa Rhodes, Ruby Robinson and Edward Thomas.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 20

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-03-2019

These ten poems celebrate all that’s wonderful about baking – the time-honoured recipes, the patient kneading and stirring of ingredients, the sticky fingers in the mixing bowl. Baking, the poems seem to say again and again, is a profoundly human art: a homemade summer pudding can create “a stillness lost in taste” at a dinner party with friends, while an old spice jar can transport us swiftly back to childhood: “I opened one: faint kitchen scents (a trace of fruit breads, Welsh cakes, and the kitchen warm and welcoming from school) took shadow form: allspice and nutmeg, cinnamon and mace…” from ‘Spice Jars’ by DA Prince. These are poems for anyone who loves to bake, as much as for those who simply appreciate the glory of a well-made Victoria Sponge. Helena Nelson is a poet and publisher – and a dab hand at choux pastry. Poems by Harry Clifton, CJ Dennis, Cathy Grindrod, Grevel Lindop, Gill McEvoy, Graham Mort, Helena Nelson, Kenn Nesbitt and DA Prince.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 20

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-01-2020

It’s better to give than to receive, as the saying goes. But then, of course, there is sharing which contains a bit of both. This mini-anthology of specially-commissioned poems by leading poets captures the rich rewards of that exchange – whether the memory of time spent with a loved one, the singing of carols or the magic of getting ready for Christmas morning with a young child: “We fill your pillow case with glittered jewels and illuminated texts. In the morning you wake to find a room covered with frosted leaves, berries and fairy lights.” from ‘Midwinter Gods’ by Jessica Mookherjee. There’s humour in an imagined baby shower for the new-born Christ-child, complete with a carpentry set and a bottle of pink fizz from someone who thought it was going to be a girl. Elsewhere we encounter an ailing family cat who recovers just in time to run rings around the Christmas tree. This selection will delight and entertain – while also reminding us of the things that really count. Poems by Andre Bagoo, Suzannah V Evans, Mark Fiddes, John Greening, Helen Ivory, John McCullough, Jessica Mookherjee, Pey Oh, Kelley Swain and Ben Wilkinson.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 20

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-09-2020

The best things come in little packages. This latest mini-anthology from Candlestick belongs to our new ‘Christmas Collection’ series and contains brand new poems by ten leading contemporary poets. The poems range from the surreal to the tenderly nostalgic, taking in the perils of an over-crowded shopping mall, the bah… humbug of Christmas enjoyed in glorious solitude and a jaded Mary who has spent far too long on the back of a donkey. We also meet a vibrant, unconventional Christmas Mother: “A brook was coiled on her head in loops of auburn hair with aquamarine banks threaded with lizards and snakes…” from ‘Christmas Mother’ by Pascale Petit. If Christmas lapses all too easily into traditional familiarity, these poems will provide a bracing antidote – a little something to indulge in while the plum pudding is taking its toll. Poems by Simon Armitage, Panya Banjoko, Alison Brackenbury, Ian Duhig, Jonathan Edwards, WN Herbert, Lorraine Mariner, Pascale Petit, Gregory Woods and Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 24

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-09-2017

Here’s one for the friends in our lives who have succumbed to the charms of chickens. A dozen poems celebrate their quirks and curiosities, with chickens increasingly kept and cherished by besotted owners whose gardens and smallholdings will never be the same again. From Diana Gittins’ petulant hens preening themselves and annihilating the flower beds, to Caroline Hawkridge’s splendid cockerel straddling the world and yelling his good morning, endearing characters of the poultry world come clucking to life: ‘There should be a word for the way they look with just one eye, neck bent … … And for the way they run toward someone they trust, their skirts hiked, their plump bodies wobbling.’ from ‘A Glossary of Chickens’ by Gary Whitehead. Poems by Jean Atkin, Jacqueline Brown, John Clare, Robert Frost, Diana Gittins, Robert Graves, Caroline Hawkridge, Norman MacCaig, Kay Ryan, Sir Charles Sedley, Jane Sudworth and Gary Whitehead.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 24

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-08-2015