CHRIS SEARLE welcomes a startling vision of contemporary Newport from a veteran photographer of the British working class
Latest editorial
Poetry Review: Hoyoot: Collected Poems And Songs by Tom Pickard
Pickard poems ‘with two fists clenched’ are an inspiration, finds DAVID JOHN DOUGLASS
ANGUS REID recommends a very unusual documentary: a love story between two disillusioned journalists
In verse and polemic, the bard points out that he is a poet and musician, not a political party
MARIA DUARTE, JAMES WALSH and ANDY HEDGECOCK review The Invite, My Father’s Island, Nirvanna: the Band, the Show, the Movie, and Oh My Goodness!
PAUL DONOVAN is chilled by the contemporary resonance of Harper Lee’s coming of age tale amidst racism and white supremacy in this excellent production
GEOFF BOTTOMS recommends the unashamedly light-hearted escapism on offer in this stage version of the 1963 film
Tom Pickard is something of a legend in his own lifetime.
By the time he was 15 he was already head and shoulders in the van of the radical free-verse movement which swept into Tyneside’s beat, blues and jazz scene of the early 1960s.
Free verse found an unlikely home in the wild, emerging youth movement. It was centred on the anti-bomb struggles, direct action and anarchism and fused with the rhythm-and-blues bars and clubs now marching in time with Liverpool and other industrial cities.
Similar stories
ALAN MORRISON recommends a consummate, heart-warming collection about a working-class upbringing in the industrial north-east
MARY CONWAY becomes impatient with the intellectual self-indulgence of Tom Stoppard in a production that is, nevertheless, total class
Two inspring books — that’s your New Year’s musing from me on January 2 2026
Although this production was in rehearsal before the playwright’s death, it allows us to pay homage to his life, suggests MARY CONWAY