Niall O'Sullivan - ProfilesArchive

About Me

MyGen Profile GeneratorNiall O'Sullivan is a scrawler, promoter and spitter of poetry. Born of Irish parents in England, he grew up in Slough, studied Art in Bath and has been living in London since the turn of the millennium. He has performed poetry since 1997, playing venues all over the country. He has performed alongside the like of Hugo Williams, John Hegley, Roddy Lumsden, John Stammers, Zena Edwards, Phill Jupitus and Pete Doherty and has been featured at the Cheltenham, Bristol, Bath, Folkestone and Penzance literature festivals. In June 2005 he performed a few gigs in Denmark including an appearance at the world famous Roskilde festival. In the autumn of 2005 Niall performed poetry around the country from Cumbria to Cornwall as part of the Apples and Snakes Temptation Tour, and was also part of the Waterways Publishing Reaching 4 tour. In 2006, Niall visited Germany as an ambassador for the UK poetry scene performing in Berlin as well as being the special guest at the first poetry slam in the eastern region. His first collection, you're not singing anymore, was published by Waterways in December 2004. It became a 20th Century Poetry Bestseller on Amazon.co.uk and was also a recommended title on Amazon.de. His work can also be found on major poetry websites wolfmagazine.co.uk and thepoem.co.uk. Niall has hosted and promoted many events including the Aromapoetry open mike with Nii Parkes as well as founding and co-hosting New Blood for three years at the Poetry CafÃ© with James Byrne. He has also run a monthly event, The Cellar, at the Poetry CafÃ© since April 2005. Niall also hosts Londonâ€™s biggest weekly open mike event, Poetry Unplugged. Outside of poetry, Niall has also hosted the 2004 Big Issue Film Festival at the Prince Charles Cinema. For almost a decade, Niall worked as a gardener to keep the wolf from the door and the weeds from the geraniums. His experiences of working the housing estates of Acton, as well as his Catholic upbringing, have become a feature of his gritty but humorous poems. He is currently working on his second collection, which will be released in the autumn of 2007. He is also developing a one-man show in conjunction with Apples and Snakes and BAC."...humour is a defining factor in the spoken word. O'Sullivan's own works, compiled in his new collection, 'You're Not Singing Anymore', are cases in point - containing funny and compassionate observations about disparate lives glimpsed on London street corners."-Time Out

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 2/18/2006
Influences: Charles Darwin (his contributions to our way of seeing the natural world rather than his dodgy victorian political views), Charles Bukowski, August Kleinzahler, John Coltrane, Richard Dawkins, Li Po, Dogen, Basho, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, the malevolent forces of nature, ellen gaffney (mum), patrick o'sullivan, glennfidich, guinness, leffe, the full english breakfast ( well, minus the eggs ), the many billion years before the first prophet hallucinated in some desert, miles, bird, mingus, rollins, coffee, homo erectus, homo neanderthalis, australopithecus, john fante, nina simone, mick foley, the view from my window, william blake, pornography, tom waits, john lee hooker, mark rothko, hokusai, van gogh, seamus heaney, palaeontology
Sounds Like:
Record Label: waterways publishing
Type of Label: None

My Blog

I aint blogged for a while so here's some random gubbins...

The poncification of Herne Hill continues. The Irish pub that became an Oirish pub has now become another pretentious toff pub. A few months ago the last pool table in my manor gave way to a wood-ove...
Posted by Niall O'Sullivan on Thu, 28 Jun 2007 08:07:00 PST

Bad Science in Poetry- Part one: But this one goes up to eleven...

I have been meaning to write a regular article about the inability of poets, especially the performance/slam variety, to research the factoids of their own poetry. While history (not my particular f...
Posted by Niall O'Sullivan on Thu, 14 Jun 2007 05:29:00 PST

pandemonium 3

hard rain this may not as hard as needles carried this umbrella everywhe...
Posted by Niall O'Sullivan on Thu, 31 May 2007 11:34:00 PST

National Gallery Podcast

Last month I was one of a group of poets commissioned to write new work to be used in a bonus track for May's National Gallery podcast. The theme is "Night at the Museum". In preparation for this I ...
Posted by Niall O'Sullivan on Tue, 01 May 2007 05:39:00 PST

Hot Air and Cold Science

Philosophers have been almost profoundly wrong in almost every question under the sun over the last 2000 years. You should never listen to the answers of philosophers, but you should listen to their q...
Posted by Niall O'Sullivan on Wed, 18 Apr 2007 04:57:00 PST

When I'm near-ta the theatre...

As you have maybe recently seen tacked at the bottom of my biog, I'm one of four artists currently developing one-person shows for a scratch run for Apples and Snakes at BAC. In this venture I am in ...
Posted by Niall O'Sullivan on Mon, 16 Apr 2007 05:36:00 PST

Poetry Unplugged Airbrushed Away by The Times

Poetry featured in two national newspapers this weekend. At the back of the Guardian's Guide there was an full page article on Scroobius Pip, a talented poet/MC doing very well at the moment, a man th...
Posted by Niall O'Sullivan on Tue, 03 Apr 2007 05:06:00 PST

In Memoriam- Dike Omeje 1972-2007

Communicating with our Ancestors- In memoriam Dike Omeje 1972-2007 It is a well known Zen custom that one communicates with one's ancestors by burning incense. If it was done in the right way, with t...
Posted by Niall O'Sullivan on Thu, 01 Mar 2007 06:07:00 PST

Niall O'Sullivan interview for FACT podcast.

Catch me in some deep chat with the deeper than deep Nii Parkes, it's the first in a series of poetry cafe podasts. You can even leave your thoughts on a chat page dedicated to post show discussion, t...
Posted by Niall O'Sullivan on Tue, 13 Feb 2007 06:24:00 PST

Happy Darwin Day!

Today, 12th of February is Darwin Day! If Chuck's dangerous idea had lead to transhumanist technology within his lifetime, then he'd be 198 today. So, if you think of yourself as risen from the minera...
Posted by Niall O'Sullivan on Mon, 12 Feb 2007 02:00:00 PST