iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

After a six-year hiatus, Poetry Unplugged is returning to Covent Garden's Poetry Cafe one more time for NATIONAL POETRY DAY UNPLUGGED!!! Thursday 1st October, 7.30pm (doors 7pm) for details and booking please visit the Poetry Society website. poetrysociety.org.uk/event/poetry...

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

RIP Wendell Berry. His poem, Questionairre, is more apt than ever.

Poem: “Questionnaire”
By Wendell Berry
1. How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy.

[cont]

[cont]

4. In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

There's definitely a 00s Spoken Word poet working at the Guardian sub desk right now.

A Guardian headline saying: Maternity Cuts
In Devon,"babies will be born in laybys".

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Reddit commenter wins the internet for today.

Reddit post linking to an article about a billboard in Ohio that says, "No child has two Dads. No child has two Moms".

The first comment underneath says, "Didn't Jesus technically have two Dads?"

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

My wife visited the Cannes film festival when she was a student. She ended up attending the premiere of Dunstan Checks In. I only found this out after we'd been married for about ten years. There's no Orangutans in The Shining or Pyscho so they just can't compete.

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

"Orange and Lime Calipo multipacks are back in stock at the big Sainsburys"

Andy Serkis intensely speaking into a microphone during the "One Way Out" prison break episode of Andor.

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

I still use this painting by Giacometti (Still Life with an Apple - 1937) as a wallpaper sometimes. It was the first thing he'd painted after a decade of sculpting. I saw it at a Royal Academy show just around the time I was abandoning visual art for poetry in my early 20s.

Oil painting of an apple on a table by Giacommetti. Mainly rusty brown colours with black lines.

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Breaking news, they've changed the thumbnail.

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

This ITV News YouTube thumbnail is going to live in my head til the day I die.

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

Does anyone know what Paul Masson was up to when this all went down?

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

Started playing Crimson Desert today. The main character is called Kliff. With a K. He's got longish hair and a beard. Easiest headcanon ever.

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

Here's a link to the book but you'll need academic access to read it. If you don't I can share a pdf of the essay (seeing as they never pay contributors for these things). www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/1... Here's a screen grab of the abstract:

text: The ‘page/stage divide’ is a familiar device for examining the difference between literary poetry and performance poetry. Poems that entrance audiences in performance are judged not to work ‘on the page’. Similarly, muted readings at literary festivals are often compared unfavourably with dynamic performances at Poetry Slams and Spoken Word nights.

This chapter proposes that the defining difference between spoken word/performance poetry and literary poetry is not simply related to differences between the mediums of printed page and spoken word. It proposes that there are a number of different critical approaches that can appraise literary and performance poetry in either medium. These critical approaches can be pared down to the contrast between the social experience of the poem and the private experience of the poem.

Contrary to the assumptions noted above regarding page and stage, these private and social aspects of a poem are not exclusive to either medium. The private experience of a poem can be recreated in a live setting, the social experience of a poem can be recreated through solitary reading and vice versa.

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

I set up family profiles on all of our streaming apps so we don't pollute each others' algos and because of this Netflix's emails address me by my profile name.

Screen grab from Netflix addressing me as Daddy

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

Just waiting for the red arrows. Any moment now...

Balding man with glasses with a big 50 balloon obscuring his face. Text below reads: Not one to normally share birthday related stuff online but today's a bit of a biggie. If you'd asked me 5 years ago I would have been all about having a big gig or something extravagant but today will be a posh cinema visit with Mrs O'Sullivan and my favourite Italian to restaurant with my little family tonight. To any friends that see this, I probably owe you a reply text or email, possibly from about five years ago or longer. I've not been very good at that kind of thing of late but I'll see if I can work through that backlog soon. Much love to everyone that's helped make the first half century something worth smiling about. Much love, Niall X

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 28/09/2025

I like setting alternate versions of Frank O'Hara's POEM (Lana Turner had Collapsed) as a writing exercise for my students but keep writing them myself because they're the perfect way of ingesting pop culture and spitting it out again. Read more stuff here: niall.garden

$POEM (Dwayne Johnson has lost 60lbs) –⁠ after Frank O'Hara I was contemplating the subtle late August/early September shift as I counted four squished slugs on the narrow path to the big Sainsburys –⁠ how I couldn’t quite pin that shift down, whether it was a quality of the light or a thinness in the air or whether it was actually me as I shifted into the Autumn of my life; how my recent embrace of the term’ “late summer” was a sign of me being in denial? But then I saw a headline in an algorithmic feed –⁠ DWAYNE JOHNSON HAS LOST 60LBS! The melange of influencers, the celebrity commentariat and wrestling dirt sheets was ablaze with takes: He’s going for serious roles now! He did it for Scorcese! A man in his fifties can’t carry that much muscle, it’s a burden that the heart cannot bear! I just wondered where that 60lbs of Dwayne Johnson had gone. Is Dwayne Johnson a variation of the ship of Theseus where a plank is shed at every port and never replaced? Maybe a tiny, 60lb Dwayne Johnson will show up and declare that he is actually the true, essential Dwayne Johnson and the bigger Dwayne Johnson is actually the shell that he cast aside? You might say that Dwayne’s brain could only live in one vessel but what if his hemispheres were also split during the great shedding? But if that was the case, only one of them would have the gift/curse of language and the only way to truly tell them apart would be to place them in opposing kitchens and smell what they are cooking. I can’t even recognise my own authentic selfhood, let alone choose from two from a fractal of voices and vantages that claim to be the essential Niall. I once dropped my phone in the toilet but I never managed to drop 60lbs. Oh Dwaynes, we love you, pair up!$

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

Just managed to buy Silksong via the Humble Store instead as I saw that the Steam keys had been replenished.

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

Whenever I see someone's ultimate productivity desk setup, I think of Eric "Concernedape" Barone's setup from when he made Stardew Valley. They should rebuild it in a museum somewhere but health and safety probably wouldn't allow it. Glorious.

Two images of Eric Barone's desk setup. The present day one on the left looks unremarkable enough but the one on the right is from when he made Stardew Valley and is a massive disasterpiece. It appears to be an improvised standing desk with the monitor perched at the top of a long, narrow cardboard box. The keyboard is resting atop the speakers.

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

This made me chuckle, but it also reminds me of this real poetry book with the most unfortunate title.

Cover of the poetry book by Joan Margarit, entitled "Tugs in the Fog"

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

Also, if I'm going to write an essay defending long, baroque sentences and comparing them to the level design of Sonic the Hedgehog, then there's only one strategy to take for the final paragraphs...

Text from the end of my essay that says:

More than that, I like how the long sentence challenges the necessities of function and understanding: stacking up colons, semi-colons, dashes, parentheses, clauses and sub-clauses to a point where the whole thing threatens to tip over in a sudden calamity that slows down the reader’s comprehension (in the same way that all those lost golden rings slowed down the frame rate of the Sega Megadrive console) –⁠ losing itself as it grinds onwards and becomes more of a thing in itself; an aesthetic monstrosity that, in its audaciousness, opens up new avenues for understanding, communication and (above all) fun.

Or something.

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

Mosseri whenever a social media app is about to die.

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Niall O'Sullivan @rustyniall.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

Isn't that how it normally works?

TFL information page saying that the cable car service is suspended.

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