Paul Muldoon
Encyclopedia
Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published over thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
and the T. S. Eliot Prize
. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry
from 1999 - 2004. At Princeton University
he is both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts. He is also the president of the Poetry Society
(U.K.) and Poetry Editor at The New Yorker
.
, County Tyrone
, the eldest of three children. The family was Catholic in a largely Protestant area of Northern Ireland. His father worked as a farmer (among other jobs) and his mother was a school-mistress. In 2001, Muldoon said of the Moy
pamphlets, some books on saints, there were, essentially, no books in the house, except one set, the Junior World Encyclopaedia, which I certainly read again and again. People would say, I suppose, that it might account for my interest in a wide range of arcane bits of information. At some level, I was self-educated." He was a '"Troubles poet" from the beginning.
In 1969, Muldoon read English at Queen's University Belfast, where he met Seamus Heaney
and became close to the Belfast Group
of poets which involved writers such as Michael Longley
, Ciarán Carson
, Medbh McGuckian
and Frank Ormsby
. Muldoon said of the experience, "I think it was fairly significant, certainly to me. It was exciting. But then I was 19, 20 years old, and at university, so everything was exciting, really." Muldoon was not a strong student at Queens. He recalls "I had stopped. Really, I should have dropped out. I'd basically lost interest halfway through. Not because there weren't great people teaching me, but I'd stopped going to lectures, and rather than doing the decent thing, I just hung around". During his time at Queens, his first collection New Weather was published by Faber and Faber
. He met his first wife, fellow student Anne-Marie Conway, and they were married after their graduation in 1973. Their marriage broke up in 1977.
For thirteen years (1973–86), Muldoon worked as an arts producer for BBC
arts in Belfast
, (including the most bitter period of the Troubles
). During this time he published the collections Why Brownlee Left (1980) and Quoof (1983). After leaving the BBC he taught English and creative writing at Caius College, Cambridge, and the University of East Anglia
where he taught such writers as Lee Hall
(Billy Elliot
) and Giles Foden
(Last King of Scotland). In 1987, he emigrated to the United States, and teaches in the creative writing program at Princeton
. He held the chair of Professor of Poetry at Oxford University for the five-year term 1999–2004, and is an Honorary Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford University
.
Muldoon is married to novelist Jean Hanff Korelitz, whom he met at an Arvon
writing course. He has two children, Dorothy and Asher, and lives in Griggstown, New Jersey
.
ning, and deft technique in meter and slant rhyme
. As Peter Davidson says in the New York Times review of books "Muldoon takes some honest-to-God reading. He's a riddler, enigmatic, distrustful of appearances, generous in allusion, doubtless a dab hand at crossword puzzles". "Darkness at Muldoon" New York Times review October 13, 2002. Accessed 2010-02-27 The Guardian
cites him as "among the few significant poets of our half-century"; "the most significant English-language poet born since the second world war" - a talent off the map. (Notably, Seamus Heaney
was born in 1939). Muldoon's work is often compared with Heaney, a fellow Northern Irish poet, friend and mentor to Muldoon. Heaney, who won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature
, is better known, sells widely and has enjoyed more popular success. Muldoon is more of 'the poet's poet', whose work is frequently too involved and opaque for a more casual readership. However, Muldoon's reputation as a serious poet was confirmed in 2003 with his winning of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
. He has been awarded fellowships in the Royal Society of Literature
and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
; the 1994 T. S. Eliot
Prize; the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, and the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Excellence in Poetry
. He was also shortlisted for the 2007 Poetry Now Award
. Muldoon’s poems have been collected into three books, Selected Poems 1968-1986 (1986), New Selected Poems: 1968-1994 (1996), and Poems 1968-1998 (2001). In September 2007 he was hired as poetry editor of The New Yorker
and is president of the British Poetry Society
(UK).
Most of Muldoon's collections contain shorter poems with an inclusion of a long concluding poem. As Muldoon produced more collections the long poems gradually took up more space in the volume, until in 1990 the poem Madoc: A Mystery took over the volume of that name, leaving only seven short poems to appear before it. Muldoon has not since published a poem of comparable length, but a new trend is emerging whereby more than one long poem appears in a volume.
Madoc: A Mystery, exploring themes of colonisation, is among Muldoon's most difficult works. It includes, as 'poetry', such non-literary constructions as maps and geometric diagrams. In the book Irish Poetry since 1950, John Goodby states it is "by common consent, the most complex poem in modern Irish literature [...] - a massively ambitious, a historiographical metafiction
". The post-modern poem narrates, in 233 sections (the same number as the number of American Indian tribes), an alternative history in which Samuel Taylor Coleridge
and Robert Southey
come to America in order to found a utopian community. The two poets had, in reality, discussed but never undertaken this journey. Muldoon's poem is inspired Southey's work Madoc
, about a legendary Welsh prince of that name
. Critics are divided over the poem's success. Some are stunned by its scope and many others, such as John Banville
, have professed themselves utterly baffled by it - feeling it to be wilfully obscure. Muldoon says of it: "I quite enjoy having fun. It's part of how it is, and who we are."
Muldoon has contributed the librettos for four operas by Daron Hagen
: Shining Brow
(1992), Vera of Las Vegas
(1996), Bandanna (1998), and The Antient Concert (2005). His interests have not only included libretto, but the rock lyric as well, penning lines for the band The Handsome Family
as well as the late Warren Zevon
whose titular track "My Ride's Here" belongs to a Muldoon collaboration. Muldoon also writes lyrics for (and plays "rudimentary rhythm" guitar in) his own Princeton-based rock band, Rackett
.
Muldoon has also edited a number of anthologies, written two children's books, translated the work of other authors, and published critical prose.
He will also be partaking in the Bush Theatre
's 2011 project Sixty Six where he has written a piece based upon a chapter of the King James Bible
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
The Pulitzer Prize in Poetry has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. However, special citations for poetry were presented in 1918 and 1919.-Winners:...
and the T. S. Eliot Prize
T. S. Eliot Prize
The T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is awarded by the Poetry Book Society to "the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland" in any particular year. The Prize was inaugurated in 1993 in celebration of the Poetry Book Society's 40th birthday and in...
. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry
Oxford Professor of Poetry
The chair of Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford is an unusual academic appointment, now held for a term of five years, and chosen through an election open to all members of Convocation, namely, all graduates and current academics of the university; in 2010, on-line voting was allowed....
from 1999 - 2004. At Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
he is both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts. He is also the president of the Poetry Society
Poetry Society
The Poetry Society is a membership organisation, open to all, whose stated aim is "to promote the study, use and enjoyment of poetry".The Society was founded in London in February 1909 as the Poetry Recital Society, becoming the Poetry Society in 1912...
(U.K.) and Poetry Editor at The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
.
Biography
Muldoon was born on a farm outside MoyMoy
-Places:* Loch Moy, a loch south of Inverness in the Highlands of Scotland.** Moy, Highland, a village beside Loch Moy** Moy Hall, also near the loch and the ancestral home of the chiefs of Clan Mackintosh** Rout of Moy, an event in the Jacobite rising of 1745...
, County Tyrone
County Tyrone
Historically Tyrone stretched as far north as Lough Foyle, and comprised part of modern day County Londonderry east of the River Foyle. The majority of County Londonderry was carved out of Tyrone between 1610-1620 when that land went to the Guilds of London to set up profit making schemes based on...
, the eldest of three children. The family was Catholic in a largely Protestant area of Northern Ireland. His father worked as a farmer (among other jobs) and his mother was a school-mistress. In 2001, Muldoon said of the Moy
It's a beautiful part of the world. It's still the place that's 'burned into the retina', and although I haven't been back there since I left for university 30 years ago, it's the place I consider to be my home. We were a fairly non-political household; my parents were nationalists, of course, but it was not something, as I recall, that was a major area of discussion. But there were patrols; an army presence; movements of troops; a sectarian divide. And that particular area was a nationalist enclave, while next door was the parish where the Orange Order was founded; we'd hear the drums on summer evenings. But I think my mother, in particular, may have tried to shelter us from it all. Besides, we didn't really socialise a great deal. We were 'blow-ins' - arrivistes - new to the area, and didn't have a lot of connections.Talking of his home life, he continues "I'm astonished to think that, apart from some Catholic Truth Society
Catholic Truth Society
Catholic Truth Society is a body that prints and publishes Catholic literature, including apologetics but also prayerbooks, spiritual reading, lives of saints and so forth...
pamphlets, some books on saints, there were, essentially, no books in the house, except one set, the Junior World Encyclopaedia, which I certainly read again and again. People would say, I suppose, that it might account for my interest in a wide range of arcane bits of information. At some level, I was self-educated." He was a '"Troubles poet" from the beginning.
In 1969, Muldoon read English at Queen's University Belfast, where he met Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...
and became close to the Belfast Group
The Belfast Group
The Belfast Group was a poets' workshop which was organized by Philip Hobsbaum when he moved to Belfast in October 1963 to lecture in English at Queen's University....
of poets which involved writers such as Michael Longley
Michael Longley
Michael Longley, CBE is a Northern Irish poet from Belfast.-Life and career:Longley was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and subsequently read Classics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus...
, Ciarán Carson
Ciaran Carson
Ciaran Gerard Carson is a Belfast, Northern Ireland-born poet and novelist.-Early years:Ciaran Carson was born in Belfast into an Irish-speaking family...
, Medbh McGuckian
Medbh McGuckian
Medbh McGuckian is a poet from Northern Ireland.-Biography:She was born the third of six children as Maeve McCaughan to Hugh and Margaret McCaughan in North Belfast. Her father was a school headmaster and her mother an influential art and music enthusiast...
and Frank Ormsby
Frank Ormsby
Francis Arthur Ormsby is a Northern Irish poet.He was educated at St Michael's College, Enniskillen and Queen's University Belfast. He was editor of The Honest Ulsterman from 1969 to 1989, and has also edited the Poetry Ireland Review. Since 1976 he has been Head of English at the Royal Belfast...
. Muldoon said of the experience, "I think it was fairly significant, certainly to me. It was exciting. But then I was 19, 20 years old, and at university, so everything was exciting, really." Muldoon was not a strong student at Queens. He recalls "I had stopped. Really, I should have dropped out. I'd basically lost interest halfway through. Not because there weren't great people teaching me, but I'd stopped going to lectures, and rather than doing the decent thing, I just hung around". During his time at Queens, his first collection New Weather was published by Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. Faber has a rich tradition of publishing a wide range of fiction, non fiction, drama, film and music...
. He met his first wife, fellow student Anne-Marie Conway, and they were married after their graduation in 1973. Their marriage broke up in 1977.
For thirteen years (1973–86), Muldoon worked as an arts producer for BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
arts in Belfast
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
, (including the most bitter period of the Troubles
The Troubles
The Troubles was a period of ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland which spilled over at various times into England, the Republic of Ireland, and mainland Europe. The duration of the Troubles is conventionally dated from the late 1960s and considered by many to have ended with the Belfast...
). During this time he published the collections Why Brownlee Left (1980) and Quoof (1983). After leaving the BBC he taught English and creative writing at Caius College, Cambridge, and the University of East Anglia
University of East Anglia
The University of East Anglia is a public research university based in Norwich, United Kingdom. It was established in 1963, and is a founder-member of the 1994 Group of research-intensive universities.-History:...
where he taught such writers as Lee Hall
Lee Hall (playwright)
Lee Hall is an English playwright and screenwriter. He is best known for the 2000 film Billy Elliot.-Early life:...
(Billy Elliot
Billy Elliot
Billy Elliot is a 2000 British drama film written by Lee Hall and directed by Stephen Daldry. Set in the fictional town of "Everington" in the real County Durham, UK, it stars Jamie Bell as 11-year-old Billy, an aspiring dancer, Gary Lewis as his coal miner father, Jamie Draven as Billy's older...
) and Giles Foden
Giles Foden
Giles Foden is an English author best known for his award-winning novel The Last King of Scotland .-Biography:Giles Foden was born in Warwickshire in 1967. His family moved to Malawi in 1971 where he was raised...
(Last King of Scotland). In 1987, he emigrated to the United States, and teaches in the creative writing program at Princeton
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
. He held the chair of Professor of Poetry at Oxford University for the five-year term 1999–2004, and is an Honorary Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford University
Hertford College, Oxford
Hertford College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is located in Catte Street, directly opposite the main entrance of the original Bodleian Library. As of 2006, the college had a financial endowment of £52m. There are 612 students , plus various visiting...
.
Muldoon is married to novelist Jean Hanff Korelitz, whom he met at an Arvon
Arvon Foundation
The Arvon Foundation is a charitable organisation in the United Kingdom which promotes creative writing. It is based in the Free Word Centre for literature, literacy and free expression in London.-History:...
writing course. He has two children, Dorothy and Asher, and lives in Griggstown, New Jersey
Griggstown, New Jersey
Griggstown is an unincorporated area and a historic district within Franklin Township, in Somerset County, New Jersey. It was first settled around 1733.-Selected sites:* * Griggstown Quail Farm...
.
Poetry and other works
His poetry is known for his difficult, sly, allusive style, casual use of obscure or archaic words, understated wit, punPun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
ning, and deft technique in meter and slant rhyme
Half rhyme
Half rhyme or slant rhyme, sometimes called sprung, near rhyme, oblique rhyme, off rhyme or imperfect rhyme, is consonance on the final consonants of the words involved . Many half/slant rhymes are also eye rhymes.Half/slant rhyme is widely used in Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and Icelandic verse...
. As Peter Davidson says in the New York Times review of books "Muldoon takes some honest-to-God reading. He's a riddler, enigmatic, distrustful of appearances, generous in allusion, doubtless a dab hand at crossword puzzles". "Darkness at Muldoon" New York Times review October 13, 2002. Accessed 2010-02-27 The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
cites him as "among the few significant poets of our half-century"; "the most significant English-language poet born since the second world war" - a talent off the map. (Notably, Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...
was born in 1939). Muldoon's work is often compared with Heaney, a fellow Northern Irish poet, friend and mentor to Muldoon. Heaney, who won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
, is better known, sells widely and has enjoyed more popular success. Muldoon is more of 'the poet's poet', whose work is frequently too involved and opaque for a more casual readership. However, Muldoon's reputation as a serious poet was confirmed in 2003 with his winning of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
The Pulitzer Prize in Poetry has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. However, special citations for poetry were presented in 1918 and 1919.-Winners:...
. He has been awarded fellowships in the Royal Society of Literature
Royal Society of Literature
The Royal Society of Literature is the "senior literary organisation in Britain". It was founded in 1820 by George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". The Society's first president was Thomas Burgess, who later became the Bishop of Salisbury...
and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
; the 1994 T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
Prize; the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, and the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Excellence in Poetry
Griffin Poetry Prize
The Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin. The awards go to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language....
. He was also shortlisted for the 2007 Poetry Now Award
Poetry Now Award
The Poetry Now Award is an annual literary prize presented for the best single volume of poetry by an Irish poet. The €5,000 award is presented during the annual Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Poetry Now international poetry festival. The festival began in 1996 and the first Poetry Now Award was bestowed...
. Muldoon’s poems have been collected into three books, Selected Poems 1968-1986 (1986), New Selected Poems: 1968-1994 (1996), and Poems 1968-1998 (2001). In September 2007 he was hired as poetry editor of The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
and is president of the British Poetry Society
Poetry Society
The Poetry Society is a membership organisation, open to all, whose stated aim is "to promote the study, use and enjoyment of poetry".The Society was founded in London in February 1909 as the Poetry Recital Society, becoming the Poetry Society in 1912...
(UK).
Most of Muldoon's collections contain shorter poems with an inclusion of a long concluding poem. As Muldoon produced more collections the long poems gradually took up more space in the volume, until in 1990 the poem Madoc: A Mystery took over the volume of that name, leaving only seven short poems to appear before it. Muldoon has not since published a poem of comparable length, but a new trend is emerging whereby more than one long poem appears in a volume.
Madoc: A Mystery, exploring themes of colonisation, is among Muldoon's most difficult works. It includes, as 'poetry', such non-literary constructions as maps and geometric diagrams. In the book Irish Poetry since 1950, John Goodby states it is "by common consent, the most complex poem in modern Irish literature [...] - a massively ambitious, a historiographical metafiction
Metafiction
Metafiction, also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion...
". The post-modern poem narrates, in 233 sections (the same number as the number of American Indian tribes), an alternative history in which Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
and Robert Southey
Robert Southey
Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...
come to America in order to found a utopian community. The two poets had, in reality, discussed but never undertaken this journey. Muldoon's poem is inspired Southey's work Madoc
Madoc (poem)
Madoc is an 1805 epic poem composed by Robert Southey. It is based on the legend of Madoc, a supposed Welsh prince who fled internecine conflict and sailed to America in the 12th century. The origins of the poem can be traced to Southey's school boy days where he completed a prose version of...
, about a legendary Welsh prince of that name
Madoc
Madoc or Madog ab Owain Gwynedd was, according to folklore, a Welsh prince who sailed to America in 1170, over three hundred years before Christopher Columbus's voyage in 1492. According to the story, he was a son of Owain Gwynedd who took to the sea to flee internecine violence at home...
. Critics are divided over the poem's success. Some are stunned by its scope and many others, such as John Banville
John Banville
John Banville is an Irish novelist and screenwriter.Banville's breakthrough novel The Book of Evidence was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the Guinness Peat Aviation award. His eighteenth novel, The Sea, won the Man Booker Prize in 2005. He was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize in 2011...
, have professed themselves utterly baffled by it - feeling it to be wilfully obscure. Muldoon says of it: "I quite enjoy having fun. It's part of how it is, and who we are."
Muldoon has contributed the librettos for four operas by Daron Hagen
Daron Hagen
Daron Aric Hagen , is an American composer, conductor, pianist, educator, librettist, and stage director of contemporary classical music and opera.- Early life and education :...
: Shining Brow
Shining Brow
Shining Brow is an English language opera by Daron Hagen, first performed by the Madison Opera in Madison, Wisconsin, April 21, 1993. It is based on events in the life of architect Frank Lloyd Wright...
(1992), Vera of Las Vegas
Vera of Las Vegas
Vera of Las Vegas is an opera by Daron Hagen based on a libretto by Paul Muldoon. The Center for Contemporary Opera gave the staged premiere on 25 June 2003 at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre of Symphony Space in New York City.-Background and premiere:...
(1996), Bandanna (1998), and The Antient Concert (2005). His interests have not only included libretto, but the rock lyric as well, penning lines for the band The Handsome Family
The Handsome Family
The Handsome Family is an alternative country band, formed in Chicago, Illinois.-History:The band was formed in 1993 by husband-and-wife duo Brett Sparks and Rennie Sparks and drummer Mike Werner, although the band would later revolve around Rennie, who writes the lyrics, and Brett, who writes...
as well as the late Warren Zevon
Warren Zevon
Warren William Zevon was an American rock singer-songwriter and musician noted for including his sometimes sardonic opinions of life in his musical lyrics, composing songs that were sometimes humorous and often had political or historical themes.Zevon's work has often been praised by well-known...
whose titular track "My Ride's Here" belongs to a Muldoon collaboration. Muldoon also writes lyrics for (and plays "rudimentary rhythm" guitar in) his own Princeton-based rock band, Rackett
RACKETT (band)
RACKETT is a self-described "three-car garage rock" band that originated from songs written and recorded by the poet Paul Muldoon and the 17th century poetry scholar Nigel Smith during mid-to-late 2004...
.
Muldoon has also edited a number of anthologies, written two children's books, translated the work of other authors, and published critical prose.
He will also be partaking in the Bush Theatre
Bush Theatre
The Bush Theatre is based in Shepherd's Bush, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. It was established in 1972 above The Bush public house by Brian McDermott, and has since become one of the most celebrated new writing theatres in the world. An intimate venue renowned for its close-up...
's 2011 project Sixty Six where he has written a piece based upon a chapter of the King James Bible
Awards
Muldoon has won the following major poetry awards:- 1990: Guggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
- 1992: Geoffrey Faber Memorial PrizeGeoffrey Faber Memorial PrizeThe Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize is a British literary prize established in 1963 in tribute to Geoffrey Faber, founder and first Chairman publisher Faber & Faber...
for Madoc: A Mystery - 1994: T. S. Eliot PrizeT. S. Eliot PrizeThe T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is awarded by the Poetry Book Society to "the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland" in any particular year. The Prize was inaugurated in 1993 in celebration of the Poetry Book Society's 40th birthday and in...
for The Annals of Chile - 1997: Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry for New Selected Poems 1968–1994
- 2002: T. S. Eliot PrizeT. S. Eliot PrizeThe T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is awarded by the Poetry Book Society to "the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland" in any particular year. The Prize was inaugurated in 1993 in celebration of the Poetry Book Society's 40th birthday and in...
(shortlist) for Moy Sand and Gravel - 2003: Griffin Poetry PrizeGriffin Poetry PrizeThe Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin. The awards go to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language....
(Canada) for Moy Sand and Gravel - 2003: Pulitzer Prize for PoetryPulitzer Prize for PoetryThe Pulitzer Prize in Poetry has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. However, special citations for poetry were presented in 1918 and 1919.-Winners:...
for Moy Sand and Gravel - 2004: American Ireland Fund Literary Award
- 2004: Aspen Prize for Poetry
- 2004: Shakespeare PrizeShakespeare PrizeThe Shakespeare Prize was an annual prize for writing or performance awarded to a British citizen by the Hamburg Alfred Toepfer Foundation. First given by Alfred Toepfer in 1937 as an expression of his Anglophilia in the face of tense international conditions, the prize was awarded only twice...
- 2009: John William CorringtonJohn William CorringtonJohn William Corrington was an American movie and television writer, novelist, poet and lawyer. He received a B.A. degree from Centenary College, in 1956 and his M.A. from Rice University in 1960, the year he took on his first teaching position in the English Department at Louisiana State University...
Award for Literary Excellence
Selected Honors
- Honorary Professor in the School of English at the University of St AndrewsUniversity of St AndrewsThe University of St Andrews, informally referred to as "St Andrews", is the oldest university in Scotland and the third oldest in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge. The university is situated in the town of St Andrews, Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. It was founded between...
(Scotland) - Professor of Poetry at Oxford University 1999–2004 (England)
- Honorary Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford University (England)
- Fellowship with the Royal Society of LiteratureRoyal Society of LiteratureThe Royal Society of Literature is the "senior literary organisation in Britain". It was founded in 1820 by George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". The Society's first president was Thomas Burgess, who later became the Bishop of Salisbury...
(England) - Fellowship with the American Academy of Arts and SciencesAmerican Academy of Arts and SciencesThe American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
(U.S.)
Poetry collections
- Knowing My Place (1971)
- New Weather (1973)
- Spirit of Dawn (1975)
- Mules (1977)
- Names and Addresses (1978)
- Immram (1980)
- The O-O's Party, New Year's Eve (1980)
- Why Brownlee Left (1980)
- Out of Siberia (1982)
- Quoof (1983)
- The Wishbone (1984)
- Paul Muldoon: Selected Poems 1968-1983 (1986)
- Meeting the British (1987)
- Madoc: A Mystery (1990)
- The Annals of Chile (1994)
- The Prince of the Quotidian (1994)
- Six Honest Serving Men (1995)
- Kerry Slides (with photographs by Bill Doyle) (1996)
- New Selected Poems: 1968-1994 (1996)
- Hopewell Haiku (1997)
- Hay (1998)
- Poems 1968-1998 (2001)
- Moy Sand and Gravel (2002) (Pulitzer Prize for PoetryPulitzer Prize for PoetryThe Pulitzer Prize in Poetry has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. However, special citations for poetry were presented in 1918 and 1919.-Winners:...
and the Griffin Poetry PrizeGriffin Poetry PrizeThe Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin. The awards go to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language....
) - Medley for Morin Khur (2005)
- Sixty Instant Messages to Tom Moore (2005)
- Horse LatitudesHorse Latitudes (book)Horse Latitudes is tenth collection of poetry from the Northern Irish poet Paul Muldoon. It was published by Faber and Faber on 19 October 2006....
(2006) (shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize) - General Admission (2006)
- When the Pie was Opened (2008)
- Plan B (2009)
- Maggot (2010), shortlisted for 2011 Poetry Now AwardPoetry Now AwardThe Poetry Now Award is an annual literary prize presented for the best single volume of poetry by an Irish poet. The €5,000 award is presented during the annual Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Poetry Now international poetry festival. The festival began in 1996 and the first Poetry Now Award was bestowed...
.
Other works
- The Scrake of Dawn: Poems by Young People from Northern Ireland Ed.(1979)
- The Faber Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry . Ed. (1986)
- The Faber Book of Beasts. Ed. (1997)
- The Oxford and Cambridge May Anthologies 2000: Poetry. Ed. (2000)
- The Best American Poetry 2005The Best American Poetry 2005The Best American Poetry 2005, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Paul Muldoon....
(Ed. with David Lehman) (2005) - The Last Thesaurus (illustrated) (1996)
- The Noctuary of Narcissus Batt (Illustrated) (1997)
- The Astrakhan Cloak (By Nuala Ní DhomhnaillNuala Ní DhomhnaillNuala Ní Dhomhnaill is an Irish poet.Born in Lancashire, England in 1952, of Irish parents, she moved to Ireland at the age of 5, and was brought up in the Dingle Gaeltacht and in Nenagh, County Tipperary. Her uncle is Monsignor Pádraig Ó Fiannachta of An Daingean, the leading authority alive on...
in Irish. Trans Muldoon.) (1992) - The Birds / adaptation after Aristophanes (1999)
- The End of the Poem: 'All Souls Night' by WB Yeats (lecture) (2000)
- To Ireland, I (Oxford Clarendon Lectures of 1998) (2000)
- The End of the Poem: Oxford Lectures in Poetry (2006)
Further Reading
- Allen Randolph, Jody. "Paul Muldoon, December 2009." Close to the Next Moment. Manchester: Carcanet, 2010.
- Holdridge, Jeff. The Poetry of Paul Muldoon. Dublin: Liffey Press, 2009.
- Kendall, Tim. Paul Muldoon. Chester Springs, PA: Dufour Editions, 1996.
- Redmond, John. "Interview with Paul Muldoon." Thumbscrew 4 Spring 1996.
- Suzan Sherman. "Yusef Komunyakaa and Paul Muldoon [Interview]." Bomb 65 Fall 1998.
- Wills, Clair. Reading Paul Muldoon. Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1997.
See also
- List of Northern Irish writers
- Oxford Professor of PoetryOxford Professor of PoetryThe chair of Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford is an unusual academic appointment, now held for a term of five years, and chosen through an election open to all members of Convocation, namely, all graduates and current academics of the university; in 2010, on-line voting was allowed....
- Pulitzer Prize for PoetryPulitzer Prize for PoetryThe Pulitzer Prize in Poetry has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. However, special citations for poetry were presented in 1918 and 1919.-Winners:...
- PostmodernismPostmodernismPostmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
External links
- Paul Muldoon's official website Accessed 2010-02-27
- Paul Muldoon discusses poetry with Wunderkammer Magazine 17 Jan 2011 (Video, 20 mins)
- Paul Muldoon reads "Wulf and Eadwacer" from The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation (audio)
- Paul Muldoon at the Key West Literary Seminar, 2010: "The Borderline" (Audio)
- Poetry Foundation profile and poems Accessed 2010-02-27
- Profile at Poets.org
- Poetry Archive biography (U.K.) Accessed 2010-02-27
- Guardian article - Extended interview with Muldoon and analysis The poet at play 12 May 2001 Accessed 2010-02-27
- Poetry Society essays on Muldoon Accessed 2010-02-27
- Transcript of interview with Ramona KovalRamona KovalRamona Koval is an Australian broadcaster, writer and journalist.Her parents were Yiddish-speaking survivors of the Holocaust who arrived in Melbourne from Poland in 1950....
, The Book ShowThe Book ShowThe Book Show is an Australian ABC radio program for the discussion of everything relating to the written word. It is broadcast live around Australia on Radio National with a daily weekday morning show which is then replayed nightly and also has a Sunday evening show. The show is hosted by Ramona...
, ABC Radio National, March 2008. Accessed 2010-02-27 - Griffin Poetry Prize biography Accessed 2010-08-27
- "Word Freak". Profile of Muldoon in the New York Times Magazine. Accessed 2010-02-27