Tom Pickard

WTom Pickard (born 1946) is an English poet and film maker who was an important initiator of the movement known as the British Poetry Revival.

Life
Pickard was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, and grew up in the workingclass suburbs of Cowgate and Blakelaw. He left school at the age of 14. Three years later he met Basil Bunting and was instrumental in the older poet's return to writing in the early 1960s, leading to the latter's most acclaimed poem, the long, autobiographical "Brigflatts", published in 1965. The association also produced Bunting's scathing "What the Chairman told Tom" ("I want to wash when I meet a poet.... my twelve-year-old can do it - AND rhyme!")

In 1963, with his first wife Connie, Pickard founded and ran the Morden Tower Book Room, where he organised a series of readings by British and American modernist tradition poets, including Bunting. He was also involved with the Ultima Thule Bookshop - specialising in poetry, music and alternative titles - between 1969 and 1973. During this period he also travelled in the United States to renew friendships with some of the American Morden Tower readers, including Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley and Ed Dorn.

In 1973, Pickard moved to London and started writing radio and documentary film scripts. His film credits include We Make Ships (1988), Birmingham is What I Think With--about the poet Roy Fisher(1991) and The Shadow and the Substance (1994). He directed the last three of these films. In 1974, his television play Squire was broadcast by the BBC and starred his friend, the singer songwriter Alan Hull—who wrote music for the play. The two friends also worked together on Pickard's BBC radio documentary, The Jarrow March (1976). He was series editor and director of film inserts on Word Of Mouth, a series of ten 30 minute TV programs for Border TV/ACGB. It won a gold medal in 1990, at the New York International Film And TV Festival, for the best performing arts series, and was a runner-up in the Royal Television Awards.

In London he collaborated with Moira Kelly of Air Gallery to run an international poetry series (which later transferred to The Riverside Studio under David Gotthard) as well as running a book-stall in Camden Lock market.

Pickard's poetry owes much to his reading of Bunting and of the Black Mountain poets, but is also rooted in his own urban working class Northumbrian background. His publications include High on the Walls (1968), The Order of Chance (1971), Hero Dust: New and Selected Poems (1979), Tiepin Eros: New and Selected Poems (1994), fuckwind (1999) Hole in the Wall: New and Selected Poems (2002), The Dark Months of May (2004) and Ballad of Jamie Allan (2007); the last three published by Flood Editions. Ballad of Jamie Allan was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award. His part autobiographical More Pricks Than Prizes was published in Boston by Pressed Wafer in 2010.

In 2004 he was commissioned by Sage Gateshead and Folkworks to write a libretto, Ballad of Jamie Allan, for the composer John Harle. The opera was premiered in 2005. A CD of Ballad of Jamie Allan (with Omar Ebrahim, Sarah Jane Morris, Kathryn Tickell, Bill Paterson, the Northern Sinfonia with Steve Lodder and Neil MacColl).

He collaborated with John Harle again in 2009 writing the words for 'A Song for London Bridge', a piece for saxophone and choir and organ. It had its premiere on the 22nd of June at Southwark Cathedral with Harle on saxophone, the Kings College Choir, Cambridge conducted by Stephen Cleobury and the organ played by David Goode.

Pickard has worked throughout his career with many musicians including Alan Hull (of Lindisfarne), Peter Kirtley and Liane Carroll, Ben Murray and Rosie Doonan, Tarras, Paul McCartney amongst others.