In 1963, with his first wife Connie, Pickard founded and ran the Morden Tower Book Room,[2] where he organised a series of readings by British and American modernist tradition poets, including Bunting.
During this period he also travelled in the United States to give performances and renew friendships with some of the American Morden Tower readers, including Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley and Ed Dorn.
Performers at the event included the poets Christopher Logue, Hamish Henderson, Tony Harrison, Eric Mottram, Jeff Nuttall, Barry MacSweeney, Andrew Wylie, Victor Bockris, Jon Silkin and singers Paul Jones, Alan Hull and Alex Glasgow.
This film centres on a party held for the redundant shop stewards and their families and combines the music of the Flying Pickets and the humour of comedian Mike Elliott to illustrate the ironies of the closure.
The title highlights Mrs Thatcher's support for the striking shipyard workers in Gdańsk while shutting down UK yards; Birmingham Is What I Think With (1991), Arts Council England--about the poet Roy Fisher; The Shadow and the Substance (1994), Channel 4.
In the film Rosemary Cramp, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at Durham, discusses the basic human need and dignity in "labour" in prehistoric times as do redundant shipyard workers from Sunderland and Tyneside.
Word of Mouth won a gold medal in 1990, at the New York International Film And TV Festival, for the best performing arts series, and was a runner-up for a Royal Television Society award.
A CD of Ballad of Jamie Allan (with Omar Ebrahim, Sarah Jane Morris, Kathryn Tickell, Bill Paterson, the Northern Sinfonia with Steve Lodder and Neil MacColl).
Pickard has worked throughout his career with many musicians, including Alan Hull (of Lindisfarne), Peter Kirtley and Liane Carroll, Jed Grimes, Ben Murray and—Rosie Doonan and the folk band Tarras among others.