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

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...

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

Addiction memoir called Not Vaping, But Drowning

Do you want to hear a barbershop song about crisps? Nicky Bray has you covered. Do you want to hear it live in North Shields, and hear how and why such things get written, in discussion with acerbic Northumberland indie punk artist The Young Property Developers? www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqOE...

Here is another poem by Hanan Al-Kafarna in Gaza, whose writing I featured in my most recent newsletter. Since then we have worked out the best way to donate to Hanan directly: her university has a student support fund at this address: iugaza.ensany.com/campaign/7102. DM me for more details -

[Audiophiles in 1936]: I’m goin’ where there’s no compression

NARC magazine here putting 'Songwriters in Conversation' in their August Highlights section! Come along if you want to find out if the rumours of a 'local folk legend' are true: www.eventbrite.com/e/1495346875...

Today's episode of my Mountain Goats podcast is about the feasts in the books I've been reading, and the famine happening in the real world right now. It's centred around a walk through Portland in 2022 in the footsteps of our song for 2012: 'Steal Smoked Fish.' open.substack.com/pub/thirtyye...

Here's Kyle Heslop's beautiful poster for Songwriters in Conversation: Comedy and Music. We'll have two 30-minute sets from The Young Property Developers & Nicky Bray followed by a Q&A about Comedy and Music. At Baba Yaga's Loft, North Shields, 17th August, 5-7:30. www.eventbrite.com/e/songwriter...

When you hear a bird singing and automatically open Shazam instead of Merlin, that’s when you know it’s a banger

Songwriters in Conversation returns on AUGUST 17th at Baba Yaga's Loft, North Shields, with sets from The Young Property Developers and Nicky Bray discussing 'Comedy and Music.' I'm delighted to share we've received £3000 in funding from North Tyneside Council to put on 4 more events in the series.

You can now read my whole essay about ‘You Or Your Memory’ and the Mountain Goats’ ‘confessional turn’ for free on the @broadsoundmag.com website! broadsoundmag.com/2025/07/08/t... The Confessional Turn (Richard O’Brien) – Broad Sound

New today on the site: @notrockyhorror.bsky.social analyzes and contextualizes @themountaingoats.bsky.social's "You or Your Memory" in another sample from our special edition "The Sunset Tree at 20" broadsoundmag.com/2025/07/08/t...

The @broadsoundmag.com Sunset Tree special edition is out in the world, featuring my essay on 'You Or Your Memory' and ideas of confessionalism, form, and reshaping the past on the Mountain Goats' breakthrough album. You can get the paperback on Amazon, or whole book in pdf here: broadsoundstore.com

I’m a Tourist Information Officer at the Hacked-Away Plateau. Here’s what Bill Callahan gets wrong:

This is one of two essays about the Mountain Goats I have out this year hopefully - the second is in an anthology about early modern literature and music, looking at John Darnielle’s uses of the past in a wider sense - this one is more about the transformations of the personal past through art

Next, @notrockyhorror.bsky.social offers analysis and context for the opening Track, "You or Your Memory"

Now available in paperback: a collection of critical essays, personal reflections, short fiction, drama, and a comic, all inspired by the Mountain Goats’ masterpiece. It’s “Broad Sound Spotlights: The Sunset Tree at 20” a.co/d/7OxVcnF

What did medieval cathedral builders drink to celebrate getting the job done? Cupola beers ;)

Cockney guru: And ‘ow do we grow??

Sondheim-themed ice cream shop called On An Ordinary Sundae

For sale, baby: shoes, never worn

All timer here from the page they make you go on when you try to opt out of targeted ads on the Guardian

Now available for pre-order: Broad Sound Spotlights The Sunset Tree at 20, a collection of critical writing, personal reflection, fiction, drama, and a comic, all inspired by the Mountain Goats’ masterpiece broadsoundstore.com/products/bro...

CUT MY LIST IN TWO PIECES THAT’S HOW YOU START QUICKSORT

Carry O))) My Wayward Sunn

“… and once, for me, John, dream your groundbird soul / into the frame of this brown pelican …” Richard O’Brien communes and commutes with John Clare.

The reason JRPGs appealed to me as a boy growing up in the UK is they teach you that if you spend long enough on a small island running in circles eventually you'll be strong enough to kill God

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.

Proustian chicken shop called Remembrance of Wings Past

[Talking to the medieval Dorito peasant about his interests]: The music of the Spears? I’ve only really heard Britney’s

Anybody with any job leads in the North East of England? I'm North Tyneside based right now and actively looking. Very open to anything to do with literature, editing, events management, social media, marketing, academia or teaching opportunities.

This is one of the 9 new poems on the buses me and Adam Dixon put together based on our chats with people at the Late Shows yesterday. We’ll be reading them on the route that leaves the Discovery Museum at 530, 630 or 730 - join us there/stops along the way if you want to hear this and the others!

If you're coming to the Late Shows tonight, come see me at CCE2 (the Northumbria building on the right opposite Manors metro)! I'll be in room 011 asking people to share their memories of the buses in Newcastle/Gateshead so that me and Adam can turn them into poems to be read on the buses tomorrow.

Really delighted to have two poems in this - one about John Clare in California and another about Wheel of Fortune, after Henry Vaughan. I’d love to see if any of you find it in the wild!

Alternative universe Morrissey: I Know We’re Back

The last thing you see when Jon Pertwee drowns you.

Pope from Chicago Chosen as pontiff by cardinals lighting white smoke Right says he's woke

Could they not have got the Swiss Guards band to play this? Seems like a one off opportunity

Celebrating new Chicago Pope in what I call the ‘Room of Beers’

Sterling Cooper Draper Spy

New Young Poets Network challenge alert! Young Poets Network is teaming up with world-leading journal @MPTmagazine for the fifth time as they celebrate their sixtieth anniversary. The challenge: write a poem inspired by the MPT archive. Enter by 22 June: bit.ly/YPN-MPT

“This poem was written when my father was very ill, dying of cancer, & I was coming home from the hospital. Suddenly this line ‘I am the resurrection & the life’ came into my head & then the poem began to emerge from the line.” —Edwin Morgan on “Message Clear” #Easter #poetry #concretepoetry 1/3

Nice manuscript bro. Was it found in a copper cylinder?

Next Wed 30 April, 16.00-17.30 I'll be talking about my book Form and Modernity in Women's Poetry to the lovely people at Northumbria University. Do give Richard a shout if you'd like to join online.

Next Wednesday 30th at 4pm in the seminar series I run we have @drsarahparker.bsky.social (University of Loughborough) speaking on ‘A Line of Her Own: Forging Alternative Narratives of Early Twentieth-Century Poetry Beyond Modernism.’ Comment if you'd like the Teams link to join this hybrid session!