Morden Tower

The Morden Tower in Back Stowell Street on the West Walls of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and a Grade I listed building. Since June 1964, Connie Pickard has been custodian of Morden Tower, and has made it a key fixture of Newcastle's alternative cultural life, with the building hosting music and poetry events often funded by Pickard.

Currently (October 2021), there are no cultural events running at the Morden Tower space, and the status of the custodianship is not known publicly. The official website is inactive.

The Tower was built about 1290. It is one of five Drum towers that remain of the sixteen that were built as part of the medieval town wall enclosing the city of Newcastle. The tower and wall were built on ground sloping towards the south, which formed part of the precinct of the Dominican Blackfriars, Newcastle, many of the buildings of which still survive. From the 16th century the Morden Tower housed the Company of Plumbers, Plasterers and Glaziers.

The Morden Tower has been a major centre for poetry readings in the North East since 1964 when Tom Pickard and Connie Pickard took out the lease. It has developed a national and international reputation for attracting significant British and American literary figures working during this period. It has been particularly noted for its association with many Beat and Black Mountain poets.

Tom and Connie Pickard were instrumental in bringing about the Newcastle's Poetry Revival. During this time they amassed a collection of books and pamphlets not obtainable in bookshops at the time. Using the Morden Tower as a venue for poetry readings and a book room they ensured Tower audiences were kept in touch with writing from Edinburgh, Paris, San-Francisco, Greenwich Village, Liverpool and Ladbroke Grove.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the Tower was an inspiration and catalyst for other counter culture ventures, in particular an outpost for Alexander Trocchi project.

Basil Bunting gave the first reading of Briggflatts in the Morden Tower, on 22 December 1965. The intimate, simple space of the Tower's upper room has been recognised by poets and audiences as an ideal location for voiced poetry, with Bob Cobbing describing it as "simply the most congenial place in the world in which to perform poetry".

Other poets to have read there include Allen Ginsberg, Ted Hughes, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Seamus Heaney, Tom Raworth, Carol Ann Duffy, Fleur Adcock and Liz Lochhead. Despite a lack of funding Morden Tower is still a popular venue for poets and experimental musicians, such as John Hegley and A Hawk and a Hacksaw.