Richard O'Brien
@notrockyhorror.bsky.social
Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at Northumbria University and lapsed early modernist. Working on poetry, novels, & a music memoir/podcast about the Mountain Goats: thirtyyearslater.substack.com. I make music as Groundbird, groundbird.bandcamp.com.
Pinned
This poem, 'John Clare Reaches the Pacific,' is very dear to my heart and I'm thrilled to see it in print in the summer issue of @nimrodjournal.bsky.social thanks to @bdralyuk.bsky.social. I wrote it on an Amtrak from Portland to LA in September 2022, from which I really did see a lot of pelicans.
4 Billionaires Crumble? I’d love to see it!
November 20, 2025 at 1:07 PM
4 Billionaires Crumble? I’d love to see it!
We had a great time on Sunday at Songwriters in Conversation: Folk Traditions, talking about the way ideas of community, impersonality, and using what you have to hand might feed into modern folk-inspired music. Here's Janice Burns at soundcheck, singing one of two beautiful unaccompanied ballads!
November 18, 2025 at 4:11 PM
We had a great time on Sunday at Songwriters in Conversation: Folk Traditions, talking about the way ideas of community, impersonality, and using what you have to hand might feed into modern folk-inspired music. Here's Janice Burns at soundcheck, singing one of two beautiful unaccompanied ballads!
📣Come do a PhD at Northumbria! We've just announced this year's batch of full-fees scholarships: www.findaphd.com/phds/program... If you'd be interested in working with me on anything poetry, prose or songwriting-related, please get in touch to talk about your ideas so we can craft a strong proposal
School of Humanities and Social Sciences (Ref: RDF26/SC/HASS) at Northumbria University on FindAPhD.com
PhD Programme - School of Humanities and Social Sciences (Ref: RDF26/SC/HASS) at Northumbria University, listed on FindAPhD.com
www.findaphd.com
November 18, 2025 at 10:07 AM
📣Come do a PhD at Northumbria! We've just announced this year's batch of full-fees scholarships: www.findaphd.com/phds/program... If you'd be interested in working with me on anything poetry, prose or songwriting-related, please get in touch to talk about your ideas so we can craft a strong proposal
This Sunday’s event previewed in NARC. magazine! Still time to get tickets… narcmagazine.com/preview-song...
Preview: Songwriters In Conversation @ Baba Yagas Loft, North Shields
On 16th November, an evening of live performance and conversation with Janice Burns and Jayne Dent explores how folk traditions shape modern song writing
narcmagazine.com
November 13, 2025 at 11:05 AM
This Sunday’s event previewed in NARC. magazine! Still time to get tickets… narcmagazine.com/preview-song...
Slowly but surely getting into the home stretch of my 30-year @themountaingoats.bsky.social newsletter/podcast. Today's post is about Ozzy Osbourne and the joy/shock of playing music around the world when you never expected to make it beyond Birmingham: thirtyyearslater.substack.com/p/2014-song-...
2014: Song for Black Sabbath’s Second North American Tour
Listen now | New creatures with new hearts.
thirtyyearslater.substack.com
November 11, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Slowly but surely getting into the home stretch of my 30-year @themountaingoats.bsky.social newsletter/podcast. Today's post is about Ozzy Osbourne and the joy/shock of playing music around the world when you never expected to make it beyond Birmingham: thirtyyearslater.substack.com/p/2014-song-...
One week left to get tickets! www.eventbrite.com/e/songwriter...
November 9, 2025 at 2:23 PM
One week left to get tickets! www.eventbrite.com/e/songwriter...
Reposted by Richard O'Brien
If a soundcloud rapper can become mayor of New York City, perhaps the stage is set for a harsh noise President
November 7, 2025 at 3:23 PM
If a soundcloud rapper can become mayor of New York City, perhaps the stage is set for a harsh noise President
Finally got around to The Secret History - I loved it for lots of reasons, not least the idea that one of the few viable paths open to you after a series of life-ruiningly bad decisions is to become a specialist in early modern literary studies
November 6, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Finally got around to The Secret History - I loved it for lots of reasons, not least the idea that one of the few viable paths open to you after a series of life-ruiningly bad decisions is to become a specialist in early modern literary studies
North East friends and followers, come along to Songwriters in Conversation #4: Folk Traditions to hear from two artists whose work in folk and adjacent styles has been heavily praised in the Guardian and elsewhere, Janice Burns and Jayne Dent! Only £6.13. www.eventbrite.com/e/songwriter...?
www.eventbrite.com
November 6, 2025 at 2:45 PM
North East friends and followers, come along to Songwriters in Conversation #4: Folk Traditions to hear from two artists whose work in folk and adjacent styles has been heavily praised in the Guardian and elsewhere, Janice Burns and Jayne Dent! Only £6.13. www.eventbrite.com/e/songwriter...?
Young Momus when you want to introduce him to your friend Jeff: What Will Jeff Be Like?
November 1, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Young Momus when you want to introduce him to your friend Jeff: What Will Jeff Be Like?
Here's a bit of the Q&A where our guests, Paul and Nicky, talk about the role of different kinds of precision, like rhyme and references, in comic songwriting: youtu.be/Axmdqtj4w3c
October 31, 2025 at 3:40 PM
Here's a bit of the Q&A where our guests, Paul and Nicky, talk about the role of different kinds of precision, like rhyme and references, in comic songwriting: youtu.be/Axmdqtj4w3c
I'm really excited to be able to share the first recording from our Songwriters in Conversation event series, featuring The Young Property Developers and Nicky Bray, recorded at Baba Yaga's Loft in North Shields by the lovely Kyle Heslop - theme is Comedy and Music! www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUQl...
Songwriters in Conversation: Comedy and Music, with The Young Property Developers and Nicky Bray
YouTube video by Richard O'Brien
www.youtube.com
October 31, 2025 at 11:23 AM
I'm really excited to be able to share the first recording from our Songwriters in Conversation event series, featuring The Young Property Developers and Nicky Bray, recorded at Baba Yaga's Loft in North Shields by the lovely Kyle Heslop - theme is Comedy and Music! www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUQl...
The next Songwriters in Conversation is on November 16th, 5-7:30pm, at Baba Yaga's Loft, North Shields, with two 30-minute sets from Janice Burns and Jayne Dent of Me Lost Me, followed by a Q&A about Folk Traditions and how they can shape contemporary songwriting. www.eventbrite.com/e/songwriter...
October 1, 2025 at 6:53 PM
The next Songwriters in Conversation is on November 16th, 5-7:30pm, at Baba Yaga's Loft, North Shields, with two 30-minute sets from Janice Burns and Jayne Dent of Me Lost Me, followed by a Q&A about Folk Traditions and how they can shape contemporary songwriting. www.eventbrite.com/e/songwriter...
Reposted by Richard O'Brien
Oh, these? Ya, organic and GMO free, I bought them from goblin men and they’re delicious.
October 1, 2025 at 11:48 AM
Oh, these? Ya, organic and GMO free, I bought them from goblin men and they’re delicious.
Reposted by Richard O'Brien
REQUEST FOR BLUESKY HELP
i have put a couple of courgettes in the fridge and am very nervous that, when i get off work at half 6, i am going to forget to transfer them into my rucksack.
i have put a couple of courgettes in the fridge and am very nervous that, when i get off work at half 6, i am going to forget to transfer them into my rucksack.
September 30, 2025 at 12:46 PM
REQUEST FOR BLUESKY HELP
i have put a couple of courgettes in the fridge and am very nervous that, when i get off work at half 6, i am going to forget to transfer them into my rucksack.
i have put a couple of courgettes in the fridge and am very nervous that, when i get off work at half 6, i am going to forget to transfer them into my rucksack.
Reposted by Richard O'Brien
Quite unreal that Tony Harrison has gone. A poet (as he termed himself) of complete conviction, percussive and passionate and someone who lit the way and made a deeply important and lasting space for others. May he and his legacy go well. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...
Tony Harrison, poet and dramatist, dies aged 88
Known for his outspoken politics, the author was acclaimed for work in theatre, opera, film and TV but wanted to be thought of as a poet above all
www.theguardian.com
September 29, 2025 at 9:38 AM
Quite unreal that Tony Harrison has gone. A poet (as he termed himself) of complete conviction, percussive and passionate and someone who lit the way and made a deeply important and lasting space for others. May he and his legacy go well. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...
Bit of exciting news - I'm coordinating a project to get lines of poetry from local poets, from the I Love North Shields newspaper archives, painted on four walls across North Shields! We'll start the installation in November. ilovenorthshields.com/poems-on-wal...
Press Release: Poems on Walls | Bringing Poetry and Art to the Streets of North Shields | I Love North Shields | Community-Powered Magazine, Events & Merch
Poems on Walls: Bringing Poetry and Art to the Streets of North Shields North Shields is set to see poetry take centre stage in a new public art project, Poems on Walls, funded by North Tyneside Counc...
ilovenorthshields.com
September 29, 2025 at 9:38 AM
Bit of exciting news - I'm coordinating a project to get lines of poetry from local poets, from the I Love North Shields newspaper archives, painted on four walls across North Shields! We'll start the installation in November. ilovenorthshields.com/poems-on-wal...
It’s not Otto to you that I’m standing von Bismarck
September 29, 2025 at 8:19 AM
It’s not Otto to you that I’m standing von Bismarck
RIP Tony Harrison: I loved how his poems addressed the shifting sands of class, education and family, and made a case for universal access to high culture. I wrote about his verse plays a bit in my PhD, which take up some of the same questions - sharing a few excerpts here.
![high and low / when your Caliban outplays your Prospero' (Trackers 137). Harrison even links the familiar Caliban/Prospero dichotomy to the flaying of Marsyas, who is portrayed as being punished by the gods for the hubris of aspiring to an elite art-form:
'They ripped off his skin / and all he ever wanted was to join in' (Trackers 136).
In contrast to this violently exclusionary binary, Morra argues that the play itself, in its 'elision of satyr and classical drama, time and place, advocates for a more cohesive, inclusive definition of society and culture built upon a perpetual openness to art' — an advocacy motivated by Harrison's own
'strong social politics [and] ... self-confessed need to validate the role of the poet and to (re) connect' (207, 211). In this context, his identification with the satyrs and with Caliban seems to underpin Harrison's aggressively un-Shakespearean verse form, situating his loose couplets in a wider quest to establish an alternative tradition, carved out of aspects included in, but nonetheless denigrated by, the old one.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:wbfymn5ze5xolapr62qvdq6a/bafkreieo4t47oz52mfau7kawt2s7bzsue45rhjzsmdliajczfmtlqblzsi@jpeg)
September 28, 2025 at 2:36 PM
RIP Tony Harrison: I loved how his poems addressed the shifting sands of class, education and family, and made a case for universal access to high culture. I wrote about his verse plays a bit in my PhD, which take up some of the same questions - sharing a few excerpts here.
Doing a cool gig of songs about ghosts and graves in a tunnel in Newcastle if any of you fancy it! From the blurb: 'Prepare to be enchanted, entertained and unnerved by a seasonal set which will make Vincent Price look like Fisher-Price, or the other way around.' ouseburntrust.org.uk/events/event...
Event
At Ouseburn Trust we offer a range of events across the Ouseburn Valley for groups and families of all ages.
ouseburntrust.org.uk
September 22, 2025 at 3:29 PM
Doing a cool gig of songs about ghosts and graves in a tunnel in Newcastle if any of you fancy it! From the blurb: 'Prepare to be enchanted, entertained and unnerved by a seasonal set which will make Vincent Price look like Fisher-Price, or the other way around.' ouseburntrust.org.uk/events/event...
I keep getting an ad for this weight loss company on my history podcast that starts ‘it’s just been one diet after another,’ which must have been how the Hungarians felt in 1848
September 10, 2025 at 6:57 PM
I keep getting an ad for this weight loss company on my history podcast that starts ‘it’s just been one diet after another,’ which must have been how the Hungarians felt in 1848
I had a fun, delirious few days writing 224 lines in Onegin stanzas about an internet-only @themountaingoats.bsky.social release from 2013, and everything else I was up to that year. The only music criticism you’ll read this year in sonnet sequence form: thirtyyearslater.substack.com/p/2013-you-a...
2013: 'You and Me and A High Balcony'
Clean slate. It's 2013 and I'm all over the place. Here are some Onegin stanzas.
thirtyyearslater.substack.com
September 5, 2025 at 12:04 PM
I had a fun, delirious few days writing 224 lines in Onegin stanzas about an internet-only @themountaingoats.bsky.social release from 2013, and everything else I was up to that year. The only music criticism you’ll read this year in sonnet sequence form: thirtyyearslater.substack.com/p/2013-you-a...
Today's instalment of my Mountain Goats newsletter is a tour through 2013, and one particular online release, in Onegin sonnets. If you're a fan of either the band or the stanza, why not give it a try? open.substack.com/pub/thirtyye...
2013: 'You and Me and A High Balcony'
Clean slate. It's 2013 and I'm all over the places. Here are some Onegin stanzas.
open.substack.com
September 1, 2025 at 7:09 PM
Today's instalment of my Mountain Goats newsletter is a tour through 2013, and one particular online release, in Onegin sonnets. If you're a fan of either the band or the stanza, why not give it a try? open.substack.com/pub/thirtyye...
Reposted by Richard O'Brien
Europeans like to eat pasta "al dente" which means, "at the dentist's"
August 19, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Europeans like to eat pasta "al dente" which means, "at the dentist's"
[Rat that should be happy cause he has a herb garden]: Despite all my sage
I am still just a rat in a cage
I am still just a rat in a cage
August 19, 2025 at 8:43 AM
[Rat that should be happy cause he has a herb garden]: Despite all my sage
I am still just a rat in a cage
I am still just a rat in a cage