Born in Northumberland, England, Basil Bunting (1900-1985) was a modernist poet writing in the tradition of Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky. Imprisoned for refusing the draft in World War I, Bunting later left England in 1923, living for periods of time in Paris, Rapallo (near Pound), the United States, and Iran, where he worked for British Intelligence. Although Bunting appeared in Zukofsky's An "Objectivists" Anthology (1932) and Pound's Active Anthology (1933), he published little during the 1950s and experienced decades of relative obscurity before the publication in 1966 of Briggflatts, a long autobiographical poem written in a Northumbrian dialect. A fellow Northumbrian, Tom Pickard (1946 – ) is a poet, novelist, radio and documentary filmmaker. From 1964 to 1972 he ran the Morden Tower Book Room, organizing readings by British and American poets including Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, and Ed Dorn. In 1963 Pickard met Bunting and was instrumental in re-energizing the older poet's career.