BookBrunch - Poetry, and the rest is noise: An interview with Jenny Swann from Candlestick Press

Swann set Candlestick up in 2008, specifically aiming to encourage people to send each other really good poems instead of greetings cards. Each of their pamphlets is package together with an envelope and a bookmark, left blank for your own message, with themes range from love to bicycles. The idea is original and has met with great success, the pamphlets straddling the line between the gift and book trade. "I had fallen in love with the poetry pamphlet as a form," enthuses Swann, as she explains where the idea came from, "but I also used to have a lot of discussions with the editor of another small poetry press about pamphlets. He said that he wasn't going to print them anymore because you can't get bookshops to buy them as they haven't got a spine and therefore no one can see them on the shelf! So I thought to myself, that's the challenge, to make sure that bookshops display poetry pamphlets in a way that they're visible, and attract the attention of their customers."