Tom Pickard is a poet and prose writer, and in more recent years an author of plays and documentaries for radio, film, and television. This later work, based in personal interpretation of careful research and interview techniques, bears a close relation to his poetry, both as an enlargement of his earlier work and as source and renewal of his poetry. Over the years, as he has moved outward intellectually and geographically from the confines of his early experience, he has articulated the voices of his region and his class and its culture. Moving from the North East of England to London, and from London to Warsaw, Tom Pickard's work has expanded with his vision into an authentic voice of experience closely felt and sharply drawn.

Born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1946, he was adopted by a great-aunt and uncle, and grew up on Tyneside, an heir to working-class...