Tom Pickard

Tom Pickard’s Ballad of Jamie Allan was a finalist in the National Book Critics Circle Awards. He lives in the North Pennines.

Poem: ‘Fiends Fell Journals’

Tom Pickard, 9 February 2012

2 January 2004. By mid-afternoon I was chasing cage fever so wrapped up in several layers of clothing – leaving barely any flesh exposed to a riving wind – threw on a backpack and headed down Ricker Gill through patches of wet rushes and stubborn heather to the snowline. As I descended the steep slippery banks of Grain Beck the stream ran fast below the old stone limekilns. Enough...

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