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Scattered around this book are a number of poems which indicate that Tom Pickard can write lyrically and easily about small-scale subjects:

sunlight after sex
first frost on the fells

a crystal apron dissolves
in a lap of certain light

water in a bedroom cup
cold clear

and the air sure

It’s modest in its intentions but it succeeds. And it strikes me that Pickard is at his best when he writes like that. The problem is that he also seems to feel the need to turn out longer poems commenting on contemporary issues even though he doesn’t really have much, if anything, of interest to say about them. Pages of stuff like this don’t add up to anything:

Hatch it & Thatch it
Thatch it & Sack it
Sack it & Knack it
Knack it & Wrack it
Wrack it & Stack it

It’s pretty boring, even juvenile, though Pickard might get away with it at a public reading where critical faculties, whether in relation to poetry or politics, are lowered. Nor does his ‘Hidden Agenda’, a poem commissioned by the New Statesman but initially banned from its pages, have much worthwhile to offer. The word “fuck” is now so commonplace that it’s a bore and it certainly doesn’t have any shock value. Perhaps Pickard was trying to revive his bad-boy image of the 1960s? Or maybe he was thinking of performing it in public, where it might raise a quick laugh?

     There are other drawbacks to this book, including some songs and rhyming poems which aim for simplicity but look thin on the page, and it’s a pity that it was thought necessary to use them. Tom Pickard has written some lively poetry over the years, he did some useful work in the North-East in the 1960s, and I liked his books, Jarrow March and We Make Ships, but it would be dishonest to disguise my dismay at most of what is on offer in his new book.