Seán Street launches ‘Candlelight’, his new collection that journeys through the darkness of loss towards the light of acceptance.

We are delighted to welcome Seán Street to celebrate his eightieth year and the launch of ‘Candlelight’, his new collection with Poetry Salzburg Press in the beautiful Hornby Library. at Liverpool Central Library, William Brown Street, Liverpool L3 8EW.

Candlelight is Seán Street’s 15th collection of poems. Prose includes works on Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Dymock Poets, as well as studies of sound poetics, the latest of which are The Sound of a Room (Routledge) and Wild Track: Sound, Text and the Idea of Birdsong (Bloomsbury). He has worked in radio and audio for more than 50 years, and is Emeritus Professor at Bournemouth University, where he was the UK’s first Professor of Radio. Born in Portsmouth, he now lives in Liverpool.

Candlelight is a personal pilgrimage from the darkness of loss, through resignation and reflection towards ultimately a sense of light, understanding and acceptance.

“The fragility of life and of the world we’ve created wind through this highly, quiet, yet deeply affective collection. Liminal spaces and sound are central to the metaphors and lyric stories, poems hanging ‘on space/between things/happening.’” (Jan Fortune).

“Here are poems well-made enough to handle:

objects cut by hand, smooth as river stones, cast to a skilful tune. Amidst these

thirty-one elegies for the good ones lost, in a darkening world, come epiphanies of

brightness.” (Chris McCabe)

“In Candlelight Seán Street explores the dark

predicaments of mortality, the solace of creativity, and the joy of being alive.” (Julian May)

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