Richard Cabut

Richard Cabut
Born	(1960-03-29) 29 March 1960 Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England
Occupation	Author Journalist Playwright Musician
Genre	Literary fiction cultural criticism poetry
Literary movement	Post punk literature
Website
www.richardcabut.com

Richard Cabut (born 29 March 1960) is a British writer, editor, and cultural commentator. He is known for his work across fiction, journalism, and criticism, particularly in relation to contemporary literature, post-punk and underground culture, urban memory, and psychogeography, blending memoir, fiction, theory and lyricism. Cabut is the author of the novel Looking for a Kiss (2020; expanded ed. 2023), the avant-garde prose work Ripped Backsides: Postcards from Beneath the Pavement (2025), and the modern fiction/poetry collection Disorderly Magic and Other Disturbances (2023). He co-edited the anthology Punk Is Dead: Modernity Killed Every Night (2017).[1][2]

Although first known for coining the term positive punk in New Musical Express in 1983,[3] Cabut’s reputation rests primarily on his literary output.

Early life

Cabut was born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, and raised in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. He was educated at Dunstable Grammar School (later Manshead School) and the Polytechnic of North London. Cabut’s family background includes his parents’ wartime displacement from Eastern Poland, a history that informs recurring themes of exile, rupture and cultural memory in his writing.

Fiction

Cabut’s fiction frequently revisits the cultural aftermath of 1970s and 1980s punk and post punk while employing modernist and post-modern techniques.

His novel Looking for a Kiss (2020; expanded edition 2023 – PC-Press) is set between London and New York in the post-punk period.[5][6] The narrative follows two protagonists navigating romantic and cultural disillusion. Reviewers have described it as an insider chronicle of the 80s post-punk era, combining autobiographical texture with fictional structure.[5] The novel situates punk within a broader literary lineage, incorporating references to Beat writing, pop art and avant-garde cinema.

Disorderly Magic and Other Disturbances (Far West Press, 2023) comprises fiction and hybrid prose pieces marked by non-linear construction and elements of magic realism.[7] The collection explores psychological fragmentation, urban estrangement and altered states of perception through compressed, impressionistic narratives.

In Ripped Backsides: Postcards from Beneath the Pavement (Far West Press, 2025), Cabut adopts a collage-like, psychogeographic form.[8] Structured as fragments, city-portraits and reflective prose sequences, the work moves between London, New York, Berlin and other ‘noir’ cities. Critics have noted its experimental method and affinities with situationist and avant-garde traditions.[9] The text departs from conventional plotting in favour of associative drift and memory-montage.

Cabut’s short fiction has also appeared in anthologies including The Edgier Waters (2006) and Affinity (2015).[10]

Cultural criticism

Cabut co-edited and contributed to Punk Is Dead: Modernity Killed Every Night (Zer0 Books, 2017), an anthology combining essays, memoir and cultural analysis.[2] The volume examines punk’s emergence and commodification, arguing for the distinctiveness of its early period. Reviews have discussed the book’s contribution to participant-driven punk historiography.[2]

Journalism and early writing

Between 1979 and 1982, Cabut produced the fanzine Kick, documenting the post-punk underground.[11]

Writing under the pseudonym Richard North, he introduced the term positive punk in New Musical Express (19 February 1983), describing a strand of post-punk and culture emphasising romanticism, aesthetic experimentation and individualism.[3] The phrase has been cited in academic studies of goth and post-punk subculture. Historian Matthew Worley noted: “Richard Cabut (Richard North) was the first to outline the basis of what eventually became codified as ‘goth’.” [12]

Theatre

Cabut has written plays staged at London venues including the Arts Theatre and the Bread and Roses Theatre. His dramatic work addresses identity, transformation and subcultural memory.

Music

Cabut played bass guitar in the post-punk band Brigandage, which released the LP Pretty Funny Thing (Gung Ho Records, 1986).[14]

Reception

Cabut is regarded as a distinctive voice within British countercultural writing, particularly for his sustained engagement with post-punk history and its afterlives in contemporary art and literature.

Selected works

Novel

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Looking for a Kiss (2020; expanded ed. 2023 – PC-Press)

Avant-garde prose and poetry

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Disorderly Magic and Other Disturbances (2023 – Far West Press) Ripped Backsides: Postcards from Beneath the Pavement (2025 – Far West Press)

Non-fiction

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Punk Is Dead: Modernity Killed Every Night (co-editor, 2017 – Zer0 Books)

Journalism

Between 1982 and 1989 Cabut contributed to the UK music press particularly New Musical Express (as Richard North) and ZigZag (magazine) also Offbeat, Siren, and Punk Lives. He has written for the BBC, and contributed to The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph.., Time Out, Big Issue, Artists & Illustrators magazine, The First Post, 3:AM Magazine (also an editor) and the revolutionary art glossy Cold Lips

Kick Fanzine

Between 1979 and 1982, Cabut published the punk fanzine Kick. According to Mathew Worley, 'Kick proved integral to developing a "positive punk" based on a premise of "individuality, creativity, rebellion."' The fanzine also displayed a mystical approach to political culture. ‘Kick suggested an anarchism that was more of a “mystic affair than a political one”, revolving around an “experiment in life”’

Brigandage

From 1983 to 1987, Cabut played bass in the punk rock band Brigandage. He played on the cassette album FYM, (FO Records, FO1001, 1984), and on the band’s mini-LP Pretty Funny Thing (Gung Ho, GHLP1, 1986). (12). One track, Angel of Vengeance, featured on the boxset Silhouettes & Statues (A Gothic Revolution 1978 - 1986) (Cherry Red, 2017). Cabut wrote the band’s accompanying sleeve notes. Brigandage was one of the few bands from the 80s positive punk era that, on principle, have refused to reform. He also managed and designed artwork for the band.

Positive Punk

With the watershed NME article ‘Punk Warriors’ 19 February 1983. Cabut first used the term ‘positive punk’, to describe a cultish following that was soon to influence goth. As described by Mathew Worley, No Future: Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture, 1976–1984. ‘Richard Cabut (Richard North) was the first to outline the basis of what eventually became codified as “goth”.’

The positive punk piece was the basis for an episode of LWT’s Friday night arts and leisure series, South of Watford.

Punk is Dead: Modernity Killed Every Night

Cabut co-edited Punk is Dead: Modernity Killed Every Night. An anthology with contributions from some of punk’s most important commentators and participants including Jon Savage, Penny Rimbaud, Judy Nylon, Jonh Ingham, Barney Hoskyns, Paul Gorman, Ted Polhemus, Simon Critchley and Simon Reynolds. Cabut provided the introduction and further chapters.

The book was widely reviewed. ‘Punk is Dead shows the transmission of culture as a kind of lucid group dreaming, Kris Kraus, The Times Literary Supplement, 9 January 2018. ‘Richard Cabut… has chosen the theme of punk as a transformative force, a becoming,’ Dickon Edwards, The Wire No. 407, January, 2018. ‘Perhaps the notion to take away is the one of endless possibility’, Kitty Empire, The Observer, 19 November 2017. Author Deborah Levy chose Punk is Dead: Modernity Killed Every Night as one of her books of the year in the New Statesman, 17–23 November 2017.

Short stories

• 'Danger Stranger' to the anthology The Edgier Waters: New Writing from Literary Upstarts (ed. Andrew Stevens, Snowbooks, 2006).
• 'All I Want' to the anthology Affinity (67 Press, 2015). Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2016.
• Cabut wrote the chapter ‘Positive Punk’, Ripped, Torn and Cut – Pop, Politics and Punks Fanzines From 1976 Matthew Worley.
• 'Déjà Vu, Déjà Me, Déjà You' (Between Shadows Press, 2021) was limited to 30 copies.

He contributed to Growing Up With Punk (Nicky Weller, Nice Time, 2018), and 100 Club Stories (Ditto Publishing, 2018).

Novels

• Dark Entries (Cold Lips Press, 2019).
• Looking for a Kiss (Sweat Drenched Press, 2020).