two hopeful poems
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedpeople i love how they for get where they are for a mo ment or how they quickly an...
I made a film
It might not be that obvious but I’ve been shifting my methods of creating and sharing these days. I have become more of a private person in my middle years...
the tap
A poem written in the Killer Zen style of Todd Moore
Molluscophobia (a haibun)
My youngest is terrified of snails and slugs so if we walk to school on a rainy morning I often have to scout ahead. I always venture the same arguments —...
Rain: Live Blog
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThe real story, of course, is the rain. Its shift from catharsis to ordeal. The lawns...
Rusty Niall Podcast #1
Hello, this is episode number 1 of a monthly podcast series where I read out and talk about my personal highlights from the posts and poems from the previous...
Holiday Blues (or The Death of Melancholy)
On the first morning that I dropped my youngest off at nursery, I returned to the silence of an empty living room and sobbed uncontrollably. I still don’t...
Notes from an English Seaside Break
Class treachery, sewage, Mulhern.
The Angel’s Nose
I Two stories about Michelangelo. In the first he’s chipping away at a lump of rock. A child asks him what he’s doing and he replies, “Releasing an angel.”...
On quitting Twitter to write my opinions in a weighty, leather tome.
A silly story, not a blog
on replacing the angel and devil on my shoulders with a gargoyle and butterfly
No matter how often you find yourself feeling at one with the fabric of the cosmos, you’ll still end up nuts-deep in a dichotomy a few hours later. So I...
Ruskin Park Monoku
It’s a well worn opinion that writing poetry is not always good for your mental wellbeing. That may be the case but writing haiku has always been a boon to...
No, you are not an inconsequential blip within the vast fabric of the cosmos
You have no doubt already seen the first high-res shots of the universe taken by the the James Webb Space Telescope. The universe is so incomprehensively...
THE REAL MAN SELF-IMPROVEMENT PLAN
A silly advert for a male empowerment course inspired this poem
Talky blog - Should The Matrix Resurrections Exist?
A transcript of some out-loud musing on the new Matrix. Spoilers ahoy.
My favourite podcast of 2021 - You Don’t Know
In terms of work that functioned as a product of and antidote to the pandemic, one of my favourite projects of 2021 was the podcast, You Don’t Know, from...
Auld Lang Something
A poem about being old and boring on New Year’s Eve
The Aesthetics of Resentment
A poem
NFTs and the Mona Lisa Curse
Why making art of value is more than just making yourself scarce
What can be learned from the suffering of the rich?
How I was cheered up by an article that argued I needed to make £300k to live comfortably in London
Friday Poem: On Jordan Peterson’s assertion on Question Time that racism should be tackled on an individual level because the concept of structural racism is too abstract, imprecise and low-resolution
A poem followed by a blog
Friday Poem: Declared Goods
We never count how many “goods” we utter each day.Good morning. Good weather. Goodnight, sweetheart.The Lord looked upon his creation and saw it was...
Writing for The Beast
How W.S. Graham’s The Beast in the Space can help orient the writer in a hyper-connected world
Friday Poem: The Good News
I pass him at the same time most mornings, pacing, proselytising, jeans turned up, casual shirt ironed, unlike mine, and I think about how gentrification has...
Remembering the Ice Bucket Challenge after watching Jordan Peele’s Us
The following blog contains spoilers for the Jordan Peele film, Us. Being so-on-the-button with the latest trends and cultural happenings, I just got round...
Poem in which the dove that Roy Batty releases at the end of Blade Runner develops an unquenchable thirst for power and becomes Twitter
I didn’t ask for a hand that has made murder to clamp down my wings and tail feathers as the ubermensch that caught me attained samadhi with his final breath...
What Blade Runner 2049 says about quitting social media
Do Androids tweet electric hot takes?
The Good Life was so bad, it made me want to quit streaming.
In the years since I returned to gaming, I have enjoyed reading reviews or comments online about really bad games. Not disappointing games or underwhelming...
The Moon is not a Cliché
A public service announcement
Poems written during Wednesday’s live stream (15/10/21)
One last visit to the Lake
Why being a scenester isn’t always an option for introverted artists
Not wanting to create within the context of a collective is not always a case of the “lone genius”
Poems I wrote during Wednesday’s live stream
I live stream most Wednesdays, when I’m not knackered from my paternal duties or dealing with the momentary return of covid symptoms. While I have failed to...
Tips for surviving National Poetry Day
Don’t worry, it’s just another day, it’ll be over soon
Paragraphs that might have been tweets, the response they might have received and how I might have felt about those responses (6/10/21)
One of my reasons for setting up a substack is so that I can get away from twitter and the twitter mentality. Here are some paragraphs based on ideas for...
An Italian man makes a grand, drunken entrance at the Tesco Local — A Haibun
‘The exciting news, it seems, is that he is quite drunk and is ready to make friends.’
Can Substack save me from Twitter?
I am exhausted and numbed by Twitter. Can rekindling my blogging help me to put the bird site to bed?