Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon

Poet

Paul Muldoon is a writer, academic and educator, as well as Pulitzer Prize-winning poet from County Armagh, Northern Ireland.  Since 1987 he has lived in the United States, where he is now Howard G. B. Clark '21 Professor at Princeton University and Chair of the Peter B. Lewis Center for the Arts. In 2007 he was appointed Poetry Editor of The New Yorker. Between 1999 and 2004 he was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford, where he is an honorary Fellow of Hertford College.  He won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for this work, Moy Sand and Gravel (2002).

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Paul Muldoon was given an American Academy of Arts and Letters award in literature for 1996. Other recent awards are the 1994 T. S. Eliot Prize, the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Excellence in Poetry, the 2004 American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the 2004 Shakespeare Prize, the 2005 Aspen Prize for Poetry, and the 2006 European Prize for Poetry. He has been described by The Times Literary Supplement as "the most significant English-language poet born since the second World War."

2mins
Veering down the track like a girl veering down a cobbled street in the meat-packing district, high heels from the night before, black shawl of black-tipped hairs…
3mins
It takes Muldoon ages to write a sentence.
3mins
Muldoon tells us about “Rackett.”
2mins
When the master was calling the roll At the primary school in Collegelands, You were meant to call back Anseo And raise your hand As your name occurred..
4mins
We are tiny little organisms that, if we are lucky, says Muldoon, “might have half dozen obsessions on which we can draw.”
3mins
Muldoon believes that a great poem can come out of nowhere.
3mins
Muldoon recommends Michael Dickman and Kathleen Graber, among others.
6mins
Everything from Irish song to Yevgeny Evtushenko.
4mins
It’s at the heart of his poetry, and Muldoon tells us of the best metaphors he’s come up with of late.
5mins
“Why don’t you write some ordinary poems that the rest of us can understand,” someone wrote to Muldoon.
3mins
Repetition is just as important in politics as it is in poetry, Muldoon says.
9mins
Muldoon talks about how meeting the great poet Seamus Heaney.
5mins
“Virtually every Irish person has a connection to the U.S.”
9mins
The political climate of Muldoon’s childhood gave him a sense of unfinished business.
2mins
The Irish language was highly politicized in Muldoon’s youth.
4mins
Love and death kept Muldoon in Ireland, and prompted him to leave.
2mins
The Pulitzer Prize winning Irish poet reads his poem.