@buttondown.email.niall@rss-parrot.net
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My name is Niall and I write essays about films, art, gaming and poetry. What really interests me is the boundary between the critical and the lyrical, using a voice that almost convinces you that it's some kind of authority before all that messy subjective stuff spills over. When I find something to write about, the subject itself isn't as important as its potential to send me into that in-between place. It could be something a dead poet once said or a really strange wrestling move. That's where I think the fun lies. If you'd like to get in touch you can find me on [Threads](https://www.threads.net/@rusty_niall), [Mastodon](https://sunny.garden/@rustyniall) or my website's [contact form](https:/niallosullivan.co.uk/contact/).
Site URL: buttondown.email/niall
Feed URL: buttondown.email/niall/rss
Posts: 10
Followers: 1
The Ballad of Binge-Purge
https://buttondown.com/niall/archive/the-ballad-of-binge-purge/
Published: December 5, 2025 14:49
Binge-purge circa 2007 (image created from my own photo and the wonderful Retrospecs app) Back in the early 00s, my friends coined a nickname for me: Binge-Purge. This was because of my habit of periodically switching between the two poles of excess and…
In defence of the much malinged creative writing degree
https://buttondown.com/niall/archive/in-defence-of-the-much-malinged-creative-writing/
Published: September 11, 2025 12:04
Pixel Picasso We're entering that liminal zone between late summer and early Autumn. The point where I begin to consider folding up my shorts for a few months and wearing big man trousers again. It's also the time when people working in academia,…
Hunt and Peck
https://buttondown.com/niall/archive/hunt-and-peck/
Published: July 31, 2025 16:40
Dickie Birds You probably started the same way – two little Dickie Birds extended over the keys, striking down onto a letter after an eye snags onto it. In my case there was the satisfying snap of the electric typewriter, but I had to go extra slow…
the living artist online
https://buttondown.com/niall/archive/the-living-artist-online/
Published: July 3, 2025 14:20
A photo I took of an empty room in The National Gallery using the GameBoy filter of the excellent (made by a human for humans) Retrospecs app I was partway through an earlier draft of this email when I glanced at one of my regular news sites and saw that…
Why it's okay to keep writing the same poem again and again
https://buttondown.com/niall/archive/why-its-okay-to-keep-writing-the-same-poem-again/
Published: June 20, 2025 13:45
A lot of the poems that I have written in recent years have been about one particular thing: the view from the rear window of our flat. I blame the pandemic. Being shut in without access to a garden for most of the day made me much more attentive to that…
on the heart's tender need to be nagged
https://buttondown.com/niall/archive/on-the-hearts-tender-need-to-be-nagged/
Published: June 2, 2025 11:30
Before my wife flew away for a week to attend her brother's wedding in Bali – leaving me with the kids, rain, housework, unmarked assignments, personal demons and Steam backlog – she observed that I probably wouldn't miss her nagging me about stuff. I…
Do plagiarists dream of electric feats?
https://buttondown.com/niall/archive/do-plagiarists-dream-of-electric-feats/
Published: May 24, 2025 13:24
It's still easy to tell when a poem has been written by an AI in response to a prompt, though the standard has been raised somewhat in the past year. Back then, I made a video aand wrote a post where I critiqued a sonnet written by Gemini. I specifically…
From Sion Hill to the Green Hill Zone
https://buttondown.com/niall/archive/from-sion-hill-to-the-green-hill-zone/
Published: May 16, 2025 12:33
The legendary idle animation of Sonic the Hedgehog About a year ago, I posted an essay that compared the opening level of Super Mario Brothers with traditional Japanese haiku. The gist of it was about how Mr Miyamoto and Nintendo had pared so many elements…
The (bitter)sweet science of the lyric poem
https://buttondown.com/niall/archive/the-bittersweet-science-of-the-lyric-poem/
Published: May 8, 2025 13:22
There’s a quote from an interview with the Dalai Lama, that has remained lodged in my head for many years, about how Buddhism is a subjective science. I was still going through the crusading atheist phase of my early thirties at the time that I heard it.…
The job of the artist differs from the job of art and that’s absolutely fine
https://buttondown.com/niall/archive/the-job-of-the-artist-differs-from-the-job-of-art/
Published: April 29, 2025 13:50
I posted an essay last week which was half memoir and half treatise on the shift from analogue to digital media, focusing on the ways in which it changed the cinema experience. Near the end, I made a little throwaway comment about how watching a movie on…