📖 Book Review ~ Ten Poems about Fathers from Candlestick Press

Candlestick Press
November 2025

My thanks to the publisher for my copy of this poetry pamphlet 

Dads, fathers, papas, daddies: the poems in this updated edition of our best-selling mini-anthology explore fatherhood from a host of angles. We encounter a father who likes running up hills, a father who plays the accordion and – poignantly – a father who needs to be taught how to hug.

The poems celebrate the fact that fathers can be both protectors and purveyors of imaginative childhood adventures:

“My father was a bear.

He carried me through forest, sky

and over frozen sea. At night

I lay along his back

wrapped in fur and heat

and while I slept, he ran…”

from ‘You May Have Heard of Me’ by Shazea Quraishi

There are also poems of tender remembrance. Everyday happenings become special with hindsight, acting as a reminder that a father’s love is something we can carry with us forever.

Poems by Melba Joyce Boyce, Lewis Buxton, WD Ehrhart, Wilfred Gibson, Edgar Albert Guest, Tyehimba Jess, Joanne Limburg, Roy McFarlane, Shazea Quraishi, Siriol Troup

Cover illustration by Sara Boccaccini Meadows

📖 Mt Review..

This poignant mini-anthology of ten poems explore fatherhood in all its many guises, discovering the subtle nuances of nurturing a protective role whilst at the same time allowing a glimpse into the man.  I’ve enjoyed discovering new verses, each of them bring something unique, and express very personal memories which resonated with me in an emotional way. 

After my father passed away I recall going into my family home and imagining him still there in every nook and cranny.

‘Dad, 

I come home 

and find you sitting

in every room in the house,

it’s smell your smell

as if it were a jacket

you’d only just thrown off,

Still warm.

From The Return by Joanne Limburg

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this mini anthology, some of the verses made me smile, whilst others brought a tender feeling of loss which reminded me powerfully of my own father who gave so much of himself in order to give his family everything. This would make the perfect gift instead of a card for fathers everywhere, especially on Fathers Day in June, or to anyone who has lost a father recently, or even a new father to remind them all quite simply how precious they are in our lives.

About the Publisher 

Candlestick Press is a small, independent press publishing sumptuously produced poetry pamphlets that serve as a wonderful alternative to a greetings card, with matching envelopes and bookmarks left blank for your message. Their subjects include Mountains, Clouds, Walking, Birds, Wine and Happiness. Candlestick Press pamphlets are stocked by chain and independent bookshops, galleries and garden centres nationwide and available to order online.

Twitter/X @poetrycandle 

Blue Sky @candlestickpress.bsky.social

Website

Publication Day Book Review ~ Dad by Steven Manchester

 

 The Story Plant
14 September 2021

My thanks to the author for my copy of this book

Three generations of dads, playing traditional roles in each other's lives, arrive simultaneously at significant crossroads. The decisions they make and the actions they take will directly - and eternally - affect each other. After a life of hard work and raising children, Robert is enjoying his well-deserved retirement when he discovers that he has an illness he might not be able to beat. 

At 19, Jonah is sprinting across the threshold of adulthood when he learns, stunningly, that he's going to become a father. And Oliver - Robert's son and Jonah's dad - has entered middle age and is paying its demanding price. While reconciling the time and effort it has taken him to reach an unfulfilling career and an even less satisfying marriage, he realizes that it's imperative that he keep it all together for the two men who mean everything to him. 

When different perspectives lead to misunderstandings that remain unspoken - sometimes for years - it takes great strength and even more love to travel beyond the resentment. Dad: A Novel chronicles the sacred legacy of fatherhood.

Manchester intended for the novel to “pull back the curtain and reveal the inner-workings of male relationships within the family unit.” Since many men have difficulty expressing their emotions, he wanted to change the narrative. Manchester has “endeavored to chronicle the sacred legacy of fatherhood, while capturing the why for many men.”

Raymond A. Levy, founder and director of the Fatherhood Project, said “Dad: A Novel demonstrates the psychological power and importance of fatherhood and a father’s love. This is a welcome addition to the culture’s growing interest in and appreciation for fathers’ emotional engagement with their family.” USA Today bestselling author Robert Dugoni called it, “A must read for men of all ages.” And Greg Bishop, founder of Daddy Boot Camp, said “Few fathers know how important they are to their kids and Steven Manchester's, Dad: A Novel has the potential to show them. Mothers may appreciate it even more.”

My Thoughts..

In Dad we meet three generations of the Earle family, all have different attitudes, hopes and expectations but what draws these three men irrevocably together is that they have a common bond of fatherhood. A grandfather, father and son, all take their specific place in this absorbing story of just what it means to be, quite simply, a dad, and as the old adage goes, any man be a father but it takes someone special to be a dad.

Each of them have their own specific worries which impacts on the story in a meaningful way. Patriarch, Robert, now retired, is facing some distressing health worries and is caught between looking back at his life, and his hopes for the future for his son and grandson. Caught in the middle is Oliver who is at a sort of crossroads and is left worrying about the meaning of his life as a father caught up in an unsatisfactory marriage, whilst his son, Jonah, at just nineteen, with his life drifting ahead of him, discovers that, unexpectedly, he is going to be a dad for the first time. As these three very different men face up to the challenges of their lives, they each learn something important about themselves, and each other, in the process.

As always this talented author gets right into the heart of family life and brings meaning and understanding to these important cross generational dilemmas and shows how, with love and kindness, one generation can help those who are following in their footsteps. If we are honest with ourselves all family relationships are complicated and perhaps none more so than for dads who wear so many different guises through the course of their lives, and I think this story shows their vulnerability, along with their strengths.

Dad is a heartwarming, and rather poignant, multi-generational story about the poignancy of ever changing family dynamics, the bonds of fatherhood and the choice of learning from mistakes and going forward into a new understanding of what it means to be , quite simply, a dad.

About the Author

Steven Manchester is the author of the #1 bestsellers Twelve Months, The Rockin’ Chair, Pressed Pennies and Gooseberry Island; the national bestsellers, Ashes, The Changing Season and Three Shoe boxes; the multi award-winning novel, Goodnight Brian; and the beloved holiday podcast drama, The Thursday Night Club. His work has appeared on NBC’s Today Show, CBS’s The Early Show and BET’s Nightly News.

Twitter @authorSteveM

Website

@TheStoryPlant

Amazon

Sunday WW1 Remembered

Father's Day 

Of the 7.5 million men who volunteered to fight or were conscripted to fight in WW1, over 500,000 children lost their fathers, which was the largest loss of fathers in modern British history. 

At school the children were taught about what was happening in Europe and they were encouraged to help at home, especially if their mother's were involved in war work. Children would also organise egg collections, fundraising activities and wealthier children would invest in war loans to contribute their help to the war.

Pupils pay their weekly contributions into the War Savings Association in 1916 at Gibbons Road School, Willesden, London
© IWM (Q 30245)

Children were even used in propaganda posters to encourage men to join up

PARLIAMENTARY RECRUITING COMMITTEE, LONDON. - POSTER NO. 79. DESIGNED AND PRINTED BY JOHNSON, RIDDLE AND CO., LTD., LONDON, S.E
© IWM (Art.IWM PST 0311)

***

For all the fathers who were lost during WW1 and who never came home

Since they have Died

May Wedderburn Cannan

Since they have died to give us gentleness,

And hearts kind with contentment and quiet mirth,

Let us who live also give happiness

And love, that’s born of pity, to the earth.

For, I have thought, some day they may lie sleeping

Forgetting all the weariness and pain,

And smile to think their world is in our keeping,

And laughter comes back to the earth again.