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Richard O'Brien

@notrockyhorror.bsky.social

1.6K followers 2.6K following 390 posts

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.

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Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · May 28

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.

A poem by Richard O'Brien published in Nimrod Journal:

John Clare Reaches the Pacific

Half-stunned on Boston Stump,
gulping your first and only glimpse of sea,
my countryman, you never got to learn
if you’d have vibed with Santa Monica.

Come now, then: hitch-hike if you have to,
get to Haight too late, freak out in citrus groves.
When did you ever see a lime like this?
Kick off your shoes. This is the living sea,

untroubled. Someone’s even windsurfing.
It’s warmer than Northborough - give it that,
and once, for me, John, dream your groundbird soul
into the frame of this brown pelican

whose bill, grazing the waters of the bay,
will scoop and dip and scoop and dip all day
so fervently you’ll soon have had your fill
and yearn for yellowhammers. All the same,

you might find shelter in these free permissions,
if you can still locate a rough wall’s shade.
Too late, they realised you needed feeding.
I’m here. I’m fed. I wish you could have seen.

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Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · 2d

I was on a snus website recently called Considerate Pouchers - please! We’re being considerate!

Home Page - Considerate Pouchers

No smoke, no smell, an invisible choice that bothers no one and respects everyone Share Your Story Donate to us Community Engagement We give a platform for pouchers to connect and engage with each oth...

ConsideratePouchers.com

Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · 7d

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...

Songwriters in Conversation
Live Music & Chat
Hosted by Richard O'Brien
Baba Yagas Loft
North Shields

16 Nov 2025
Folk Traditions
Jayne Dent (Me Lost Me)
Janice Burns

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Reposted by Richard O'Brien

Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 7d

Oh, these? Ya, organic and GMO free, I bought them from goblin men and they’re delicious.

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Reposted by Richard O'Brien

LRB Bookshop @londonreviewbookshop.co.uk · 8d

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.

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Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · 9d

TNT’s Will series definitely fits, there’s a crazy episode that’s an orgy at Francis Bacon’s house, happy to tell you more lmao

Reposted by Richard O'Brien

Harry Man @harrymanonbluesky.bsky.social · 10d

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

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Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · 10d

Heavy verse only!

Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · 10d

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

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Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · 10d

It’s not Otto to you that I’m standing von Bismarck

Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · 10d

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.

Tony Harrison introduces the printed text of his play Square Rounds by stressing his difficulties in finding an approach which would allow him to 'rescue the actor and text from the suffocation of naturalism'
(170). Harrison here expresses his desire to
'create a new poetic theatre that drew from the past, but which looked straight into the depths and disturbances of our own times'
(170), but has commented elsewhere that it is difficult to do so in the present climate because 'we've got hooked on realism, and I hate realism' (Winder, 'Interview'). Against realism, Harrison opposes his conviction that 'the great tradition is all poets... And it's not just a question of poetry — it's metricality. People don't realise what its power is' (Winder, 'Interview').
Rather than continuing as if versified speech were the natural method for drama, Eliot insisted that verse 'must justify itself
dramatically, and not merely be fine poetry shaped into a dramatic form. From this it follows that no play should be written in verse for which prose is dramaticallv

verse for which prose is dramatically adequate' ('Poetry' 132).
Tony Harrison's firm declaration to Robert Winder - 'We've got hooked on realism, and I hate realism' - illustrates more combatively than most how many verse playwrights today, in paratextual material and within their own work, take up Eliot's challenge of self-justification. Yet even for Harrison, who writes in rhymed couplets which in practice often fall into a version of the 'fourteener' rhythm popular in the 1580s, an anti-realist position leads inevitably to being viewed through the filter of Shakespeare's very different poetic dramaturgy.
Nicholas Wroe, interviewing Richard Eyre in the Guardian, summarises the director's belief that 'Harrison has not been yoked to the usual list of great British dramatists because he has chosen to write exclusively in verse! The playwright finds himself having to validate, if not excuse, his dramaturgical form. In the Introduction to

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.

Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · 16d

Who doesn’t love a tunnel?

Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · 16d

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

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Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · 28d

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

Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · Sep 5

Ah I’m so glad you enjoyed it! It was easier to read in a way than the usual sprawling sentences

Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · Sep 5

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

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Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · Sep 1

Also available to listen here: open.spotify.com/episode/1HiZ...

2013: 'You and Me and A High Balcony'

open.spotify.com

Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · Sep 1

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

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Reposted by Richard O'Brien

Daniel Kennedy @fliglman.bsky.social · Aug 19

Europeans like to eat pasta "al dente" which means, "at the dentist's"

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Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · Aug 19

[Rat that should be happy cause he has a herb garden]: Despite all my sage
I am still just a rat in a cage

Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · Aug 15

Addiction memoir called Not Vaping, But Drowning

Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · Aug 8

Oh you’re at Newcastle sorry - but I am in North Tyneside!

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Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · Aug 8

Hi Alison, I’m at Northumbria too and interested in poetry in urban space and pride in place/belonging - would love to have a chat sometime!

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Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · Aug 7

Saw the title in passing and briefly thought you were sharing my friend’s song ‘Black Metal Dad’ which I can imagine you would also enjoy: youtu.be/HZ8zmdQMnQQ?...

Black Metal Dad

YouTube video by The Young Property Developers - Topic

youtu.be

Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · Aug 6

Then you have to come down to Baba Yaga's House in North Shields, next Sunday August 17th, for two half-hour sets followed by a chat about 'Comedy and Music.' Early evening, you'll be out before 8, in good time for some more crisps. Tickets nearly 50% sold already! www.eventbrite.com/e/songwriter...

Songwriters in Conversation #3 (The Young Property Developers, Nicky Bray)

Performances by the Young Property Developers and Nicky Bray, followed by a Q&A with the songwriters discussing community and collaboration

www.eventbrite.com

Richard O'Brien @notrockyhorror.bsky.social · Aug 6

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...

'Gary Vinegar' by Nicky Bray's Musical Menagerie.

YouTube video by Nicky Bray's Musical Menagerie

www.youtube.com

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