Book Bar: Richard Foster – The Punk Rock Birdwatching Club

A pop up event: the first of two! WORMie and author, Richard Foster will read a number of extracts from his book, The Punk Rock Birdwatching Club. Expect tales of socio-cultural madness and birdwatching from the Netherlands of the noughties, a period when Richard worked in the Bollenstreek. The readings in total will last around 30 minutes. We will try to hook up some strange sounds too, from the Radio WORM booth.

"The Punk Rock Birdwatching Club introduces a diverse cast of voices – from addicts to grandmothers – who narrate eight short stories dealing with the major social changes that country underwent during the mid-noughties. We learn of the upheavals brought on by the Euro and the influx of Polish workers alongside the slow disappearance of the British and Irish worker-raver tribes post-Schengen, all set against a backdrop of rising costs, political murders and foreign wars. We also learn of the shock of new party snacks, like asparagus sticks wrapped in ham."

Richard Foster
Richard is an artist and writer. Currently, he writes about popular culture for English-language publications such as The Quietus, Caught By the River, The Wire and Louder than War. Richard’s work on the history of Dutch post-punk is published by Routledge, Cambridge Scholars and Intellect Books. He is also the author of two autofictions based in the Netherlands of the 2000s, Flower Factory (2022) and The Punk Rock Birdwatching Club, (2025), both by Ortac Press. He works here at WORM. Between 2004 and 2015 he was co-editor of Incendiary Magazine, a website whose main focus was increasingly based around new Dutch underground pop music. He runs the ongoing conceptual art project, The Museum of Photocopies.

Richard Foster is kunstenaar en schrijver. Hij schrijft regelmatig over cultuur en popmuziek voor onder andere The Quietus, Caught By the River, The Wire en Louder than War. Tussen 2004 en 2015 was hij co-redacteur van Incendiary Magazine, een Engelstalige website die focuste op nieuwe Nederlandse underground popmuziek. Richards werk over de geschiedenis van de Nederlandse postpunk is uitgegeven door Routledge, Cambridge Scholars en Intellect Books. Zijn debuutroman, Flower Factory, werd in 2022 gepubliceerd door de Britse uitgever, Ortac Press. Zijn nieuwe boek, The Punk Rock Birdwatching Club, verschijnt in februari 2025, tevens uitgebracht door Ortac Press. Hij runt The Museum of Photocopies. Voor zijn dagelijks brood is hij adviseur marketing en communicatie bij WORM, in Rotterdam.