Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet, born in 1951. He has published more than thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. At Princeton University he has been both the Howard G. B. Clark '21 University Professor in the Humanities and Founding Chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 to 2004 and has also served as president of the Poetry Society (UK) and poetry editor at The New Yorker.

Life and work Muldoon was born, the eldest of three children, on a farm in County Armagh outside The Moy, near the boundary with County Tyrone, 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; and 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 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. where his students included Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) and Giles Foden (Last King of Scotland). In 1987, Muldoon emigrated to the United States, where he taught in the creative writing program at Princeton. He was Professor of Poetry at Oxford University for the five-year term 1999–2004, and is an Honorary Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford.

Poetry and other works His poetry is known for his difficult, sly, allusive style, casual use of obscure or archaic words, understated wit, punning, 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". In 2001, Robert Potts, former editor of Poetry Review of The Guardian, cited him as being "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. The post-modern poem narrates, in 233 sections (the same number as the number of Native American tribes), an alternative history in which Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey come to America to found a utopian community. The two poets had, in reality, discussed but never undertaken this journey. Muldoon's poem is inspired by 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." was disbanded in 2010. Another of Muldoon's bands, Wayside Shrines, has recorded and released thirteen of the lyrics included in Muldoon's collection of rock lyrics, Word on the Street. His current group is known as Paul Muldoon & Rogue Oliphant. In 2025 they released their acclaimed album, "Visible From Space" on Soul Selects Records.

Muldoon has also edited a number of anthologies, including The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present by Paul McCartney, published in 2021, written two children's books, translated the work of other authors, performed live at the Poetry Brothel. and published critical prose.

Awards Muldoon has won the following major poetry awards: 1990: Guggenheim Fellowship 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 2009: John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence 2017: Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry

Selected honours Honorary Professor in the School of English at the University of St Andrews (Scotland) The Professor of Poetry at University of Oxford (1999–2004) (England) Honorary Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford University (England) Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (England) Member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 2000) (US) Awarded an honorary doctorate by Trinity College Dublin in 2014 (Ireland) Saoi of Aosdána (Saoi) (Ireland) in 2025