More Pricks than Prizes

by Tom Pickard

Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. MORE PRICKS THAN PRIZES is a memoir that takes Pickard from Newcastle in 1968 to London's Old Bailey in 1976, with side trips to Poland. The poet Basil Bunting makes an appearance. As does Paul McCartney. This is a true crime story with a happy ending. "I am an old admirer of Tom Pickard's poetry and believe as does Basil Bunting that he is one of the most live and true poetic voices in Great Britain"—Allen Ginsberg.

148 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2010

About the author

Tom Pickard, a Newcastle-born writer who left school at 14 and fell swiftly under the spell of American Beat poetry and poets, was not only present at the birth of the British Poetry Revival in 1965 but also is credited with leading the charge.

The author of 10 books of poetry and prose, Pickard will present a poetry@mit reading on Thursday, Nov. 18 at 7 p.m. in Room 6-120.

As a poet, Pickard is known for his poetic range, from erotic to political, from lyrically delicate to poignantly sad to bluntly expletive-driven. He was described as a "voice of finesse and powerful emotion" by The Guardian (UK). In the preface to "F***wind," former Beatle Paul McCartney wrote, "This collection of poems and songs soars over the fells, screeching truth, sex, humor, anger and love."

During the 1960s, Pickard ran bookstores and organized readings in England by well-known American beat poets including Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso. The British Revival is said to have grown out of these efforts, bringing wit, modernism, romance, excess and sexual expressiveness to poetry.

Pickard, 58, lives on the edge of Fiends Fell on the English-Scottish border. He has directed and produced a number of documentary films for British television and is currently writing a libretto for composer John Harle. "The Ballad Of Jamie Allan" is based on the 18th-century gypsy whose reputation as a great musician was matched by his reputation as an outlaw. from MIT NEWS http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice

Reviews

[Alan Davies]

Pickard seems to have gotten through life in part because he had a sense of humor / or perhaps the humor is just in the telling. This short book bursts.

The first anecdote in the book has Pickard talking with Bunting about some hash he was trying to sell.

“Do you think this hash is coated with opium, Basil?”
Basil Bunting took his lunch break upstairs in the Rose and Crown where he grumbled about having to proof stocks and shares all morning for the local rag while his eyes were thickening with cataracts. He took the handful of quid deals of the “black Packi” hashish that I was selling around the pubs and held one to his nose and sniffed it, then shook his head in discouragement, and suggested that I was taking too many risks for too small a reward.

The rapport between the two is palpable.

Tom Pickard was instrumental in getting older poet Basil Bunting writing again after he’d returned from being a reporter in the Middle East. Without Tom we would probably not have Bunting’s great poem Brigflatts. More Bunting anecdotes follow.

The rest of the book reports the trials and tribulations of Mr Pickard. Triumphs were hard to come by. He faces a plethora of failures and bad luck and impossibilities. One of his books of very fine poetry is entitled Guttersnipe / which Merriam-Webster defines as a homeless vagabond and especially an outcast boy or girl in the streets of a city.

He comes we gather from Newcastle upon Tyne. Three times he mentions ruefully the children left behind. He undergoes an 18 hour interrogation about his possible part in drug smuggling. He smokes a few spliffs while working on a poem. He falls in love with a woman when in Poland / but his plans for reuniting are foiled when his flat gets raided. He gets called in for questioning.

The two officials sat at an empty table and I was instructed to sit opposite. They studied me carefully as they loaded various files onto the desk between us. The senior officer opened an envelope and took out my slim month-at-a-glance diary for 1976 that had been removed in the raid.

“We’ve been following your career with great interest.” He folded open the month of August.
“Are you a socialist?”
“I hope so. Why?”
“It says here ‘Picket South Africa House.’ Did you organize the picket line?”
“No.”
“What do you write poems about?”
“You didn’t bring me here for a tutorial.”
“You’ve really disappointed me. I used to be a fan of yours,” said the Geordie arresting officer.

Interrogations continue for eighteen hours. His case comes up in court and he sweats it out / prison being a real possibility / until Bunting shows up to offer a very positive character assessment. Tom walks.

The Tom Pickard story goes on.

Here’s the happy ending –

One week later Lindsay Anderson lent me the money to buy an airline ticket to Warsaw and we flew there together—he to show his films and lecture and I to meet the woman who had waited a year for my return. We cleared customs and immigration control and once out into the airport, a short taxi ride from my lover and a long way from a year of sweated fear, I took a deep breath, opened my arms and said, with a touch of irony, “Ah, freedom.”
“Dear boy,” Lindsay chided, “you never know who’s listening.”

Read More Pricks Than Prizes for the pleasure of his language, and the stories that get told along the way. If you want to write prose that is as close to your feet as it is to your head / have a look at this man’s book.

Here’s one of his poems from the book Hero Dust –

My Daughter’s Heart

my daughter’s heart beats against me
gulls fly up river
white factory smoke flows east
still winter trees

grateful for the crows rough caw
so many sea birds circle the river
slow goods-train

movement in the still trees
stray thought starling
co-ordination of all things
in a moment

*

Do yourself the great service of finding Basil Bunting’s poems / his Collected perhaps at the library.

Following is his Advice to Young Poets –

I SUGGEST
1. Compose aloud; poetry is a sound.
2. Vary rhythm enough to stir the emotion you want but not so as to lose impetus.
3. Use spoken words and syntax.
4. Fear adjectives; they bleed nouns. Hate the passive.
5. Jettison ornament gaily but keep shape

Put your poem away till you forget it, then:
6. Cut out every word you dare.
7. Do it again a week later, and again.

Never explain - your reader is as smart as you.

Advice that Tom Pickard most certainly took to heart / and to tongue.

/ Copyright © Alan Davies 2021