Newcastle's rebel poet from the 60s, and still fiery - Tom Pickard at Aldeburgh
Out of Newcastle in the 1960s there came the Animals, “Likely Lads” Bob and Terry … and Tom Pickard, a teenage poet who set up his own bookshop and poetry readings and attracted famous poets to them, rescued Basil Bunting from obscurity, and was praised by a visiting Allen Ginsberg. With the publication of hoyoot, Collected Poems and Songs, by Carcanet earlier this year, the reputation of Pickard,...
26th November 2014
Helen Mort wins first collection prize with 'Division Street'
Helen Mort has won this year’s Fenton Aldeburgh first collection prize, with Division Street, it was announced at the festival on Friday.
Division Street, with its striking and famous cover photograph by the late Guardian photographer Don McPhee, from the 1984-85 miners’ strike, was also on the s...
26th November 2014
The strange case of the 'lost' poet: on the trail of Rosemary Tonks
A poetry detective story, about the tracking down of a poet “lost” since the 1970s, and who died earlier this year at the age of 85, was revealed at the Aldeburgh poetry festival on Sunday.
Bloodax...
26th November 2014
The haunting: Dan O'Brien on how he came to write 'docu-poetry' about war
Several years ago American playwright and poet Dan O’Brien heard Canadian photojournalist Paul Watson giving an interview about how he was haunted by a photograph he took of a dead US serviceman in So...
26th November 2014
Mersey mania, Seine bridges, a tattooed granny: the life and times of Brian Patten
When The Mersey Sound anthology of Liverpool poets Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten quickly became hugely popular in the 1960s, it dismayed a number of critics, Patten revealed in a Q&A s...
26th November 2014
