This celebration title offers light in many glorious guises, helping mark one million pamphlet sales for Candlestick Press. We encounter celestial light in the form of the sun, moon and stars as well as the miracle of the Northern Lights. There’s the dazzle of the sea and mysterious bioluminescence from the natural world.
 
The poems also explore what light can mean to us as humans, with its promise of hope and a happier future. And there’s lighting a candle in remembrance of a loved one:
 
“…a sign says, and say a prayer, so I do.
I light it for you, you who made the world
a brighter place, and leave it burning.”
from ‘Fire lit up the sky’ by Carole Bromley
 
We hope that this dazzling selection – which includes the winning poems in our recent competition – will offer moments of delight and lasting joy, a poem (like a candlestick) being a lovely bearer of illumination.
 
Poems by Shasta Hanif Ali, Carole Bromley, Jane Burn, Rosie Jackson, Rachel Jeffcoat, Stephen Keeler, Nairn Kennedy, DA Prince, Penny Sharman and Laura Theis.
Cover illustration by Rebecca Vincent.
 
Donation to Starlight Children’s Foundation.