Paul Muldoon (born June 20, 1951) is a poet from County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Muldoon's poetry is known for difficulty, allusion, casual use of extremely obscure or archaic words, understated wit, punning, and deft technique in meter and slant-rhyme. Muldoon has lived in the United States since 1987; he teaches at Princeton University and is an Honorary Professor in the School of English at the University of St Andrews. He held the chair of Professor of Poetry at Oxford University for the five-year term 1999–2004.

Until recently, Muldoon was often thought of as the second-most-eminent living poet in Northern Ireland, living in the shadow of his friend Seamus Heaney; but his reputation has grown since he won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. His other honors include 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 has two children--Dorothy, 13, and Asher, 6--and lives in Griggstown, New Jersey.

Works

In 2006, Muldoon's published books (with major collections starred) were:

• Knowing My Place (1971)
• New Weather (1973)*
• Spirit of Dawn (1975)
• Mules (1977)*
• Names and Adresses (1978)
• Immmran (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)* (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the 2003 International Griffin Poetry Prize)
• Medley for Morin Khur (2005)
• Sixty Instant Messages to Tom Moore (2005)*
• Horse Latitudes (forthcoming) (2006)*

Most of these volumes were collections of shorter poems. Often a single and considerably longer poem is placed at the end of a volume. Muldoon's most recent collections have, however, included more than one long poem.

Madoc: A Mystery, among Muldoon's most difficult works, is a book-length poem, which some consider Muldoon's masterpiece. It narrates in fractured sections an alternate history in which Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey come to America in order to found a utopian community. (The poets had, in reality, discussed but never undertaken this journey; the title comes from Southey's poem Madoc, about a legendary Welsh prince of that name.)

Muldoon has contributed the librettos for four operas by American composer Daron Hagen: Shining Brow (1992), Vera of Las Vegas (1996), Bandanna (1998), and The Antient Concert (2005).

Muldoon has also edited a number of anthologies, written two children's books, translated the work of other authors, and - finally - published critical prose. These are, respectively:

• The Scrake of Dawn: Poems by Young People from Northern Ireland (1979)
• The Faber Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry (1986)
• The Faber Book of Beasts (1997)
• The Oxford and Cambridge May Anthologies 2000: Poetry (2000)
• The Best American Poetry 2005 (with David Lehman) (2005)

• The Last Thesaurus (1996)
• The Noctuary of Narcissus Batt (1997)

• The Astrakhan Cloak / Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (translator) (1992)
• The Birds / adaptation after Aristophanes (1999)

• The End of the Poem: 'All Souls Night' by WB Yeats (lecture) (2000)
• To Ireland, I (2000)
• The End of the Poem: Oxford Lectures in Poetry (forthcoming) (2006)

Awards¹

• 1992 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for Madoc: A Mystery
• 1994 T. S. Eliot Prize for The Annals of Chile
• 1997 Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry for New Selected Poems 1968–1994
• 2002 T. S. Eliot Prize (shortlist) for Moy Sand and Gravel
• 2003 Griffin Poetry Prize (Canada) for Moy Sand and Gravel
• 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Moy Sand and Gravel
• 2004 American Ireland Fund Literary Award
• 2004 Aspen Prize for Poetry
• 2004 Shakespeare Prize

References

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External links

• Paul Muldoon's official website
• Aosdána short biography
• Griffin Poetry Prize biography, including audio clip
• Official Shining Brow Opera website
• Official Bandanna Opera website
• Official Vera of Las Vegas Opera website

See also

• List of Northern Ireland writers

1951 births | Living people | Northern Irish poets | Aosdána | Alumni of Queen's University, Belfast | University_of_St_Andrews_academics | Pulitzer_Prize_winners

Paul Muldoon