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Muldoon’s latest poetry collection continues his longtime trick of marshaling obscure references into fluent, fun and rollicking lyrics that lull you in with their musicality, then punch you in the gut with their full force once you decipher their meanings. In his best work, time dissolves and the sediment separating sections of human history melts away.
September 19th, 2024
"Muldoon’s verse seems just as fresh and era-defining as ever." James Patterson, RTE
Following 2021’s Howdie-Skelp, Muldoon is in a playful mode. The book is buttressed by long sonnet sequences, at once enigmatic, wise and vitriolically angry, notably in Near Izium, which focuses on the Ukraine war: his most powerful political poem since Meeting the British. Elsewhere he creates sense and nonsense through his unmatched ear for unexpected rhyme, avoiding whimsy by pinpointing instances of tender clarity amid the levity: “We mourn all those poor souls who’ve drowned / because our own inconstant beacons // have led to their running aground.” Rishi Dastidar, The Guardian
RTE Review here
Fine words blended with catchy tunes sharpened the storytelling on Paul Muldoon: Laoithe is Liricí, a music-led documentary about the life and rhymes of the Portadown-born poet. Muldoon is a renowned verse-maker and literary boffin who has always maintained a tight grip on the japes and jives of pop culture, the wellspring of his inspiration. He’s a dedicated rock fan who has collaborated to good effect with some of rock’s key players.
Imaginatively directed by Alan Gilsenan, this was a bilingual endeavour that found an agile means of capturing Muldoon’s distinctive voice in multiple registers. Musical contributors included Laurie Anderson, Bono and The Edge, Paul Brady, Damien Rice, Moya Brennan and Iarla O’Lionáird, while we heard evocative readings from Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Van Morrison, PJ Harvey, Stephen Rea and Liam Neeson among others. Ultimately it was the smart lines rather than the stellar line-up that distinguished the venture. Big subjects were insightfully tackled in memorable sentences.
Above all else, Laoithe is Liricí (A Life in Lyrics) was that rarest of arts doc spectacles: a film about creativity that was itself creative.
Liam Fay, London Sunday Times
On November 18, 2022, President Michael D. Higgins announced that Paul Muldoon would serve as Ireland Professor of Poetry from 2022 until 2025.
Paul Muldoon said of his appointment: “To be a poet at all is to be a professor of poetry. In this case, it’s especially gratifying to have the opportunity to formalize that professing, that “declaring openly,” of how poetry has been the central spiritual practice of my life. In the course of the next three years I hope to focus less on the writing of poetry than the reading of it. At Queen’s University, Belfast, for example, I’ll be leading discussions on “How To Read a Poem.” These discussions will centre on poems published in literary journals and newspapers in the same week as our meeting and will be open to one and all. That’s a forum I also plan to offer in both UCD and TCD, though I’m very keen to make further connections with the School of Irish, Celtic Studies and Folklore at UCD and the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation. The lectures I’ll be giving as Ireland Professor of Poetry will reflect all of these interests, plus a few more. After 35 years of teaching in the US, I’m looking forward to connecting more immediately with, and contributing to, the cultural life of Ireland.”
Paul Muldoon: Laoithe’s Liricí/A Life in Lyrics, directed by Alan Gilsenan and commissioned by TG4 and the BBC, was shown at the Cork International Film Festival on November 19 2022.
“Speaking in fine Irish, the Armagh poet was an expectedly compelling guide through his own life, but what really dazzles is the extraordinary line-up of guest stars. Laurie Anderson, Van Morrison, Ruth Negga, PJ Harvey, Richard Thompson, Paul McCartney and Bono are just a few of those turning up to pay tribute in a film that is always at home to Muldoon’s off-centre wit.” Donald Clark, The Irish Times
Paul McCartney: The Lyrics will be published on November 2nd, 2021.
Paul Muldoon’s fourteenth collection, Howdie-Skelp will be published in November, 2021, by Faber & Faber and Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Paul Muldoon’s Binge won the 2020 Michael Marks award for the best pamphlet published in the UK.
"The judges were delighted by the great energy and inventiveness of these poems, their formal and linguistic brio and the emu-like way they seem to digest almost any subject matter. Some poems address landscape and life in Northern Ireland, others address friends and alert us to wonders and strangeness around the globe. The poetry can be very much of the moment – the title poem is a fantasia on a week’s news stories from The Times –, but it also ranges back across millennia of culture and history. Along the way, deadly serious observations rub against genuinely funny jokes. Paul Muldoon may be a long established presence, but this pamphlet is wonderfully fresh."
Sadie and the Sadists, the second album by Rogue Oliphant, is available on Amazon. A double LP version of the album is available for $25 plus shipping. Please use the contact form to order your copy.
On February 27th, NYU’s Glucksman Ireland House presented Paul Muldoon with the Seamus Heaney Award for Arts & Letters. The event took place at NYU's Kimmel Center for University Life. The award was presented by Marie Heaney, writer and the wife of late poet Seamus Heaney.
The Seamus Heaney Award for Arts & Letters is awarded in memory of the late Nobel Laureate who was an honored guest at the 2013 Glucksman Ireland House Gala and a great champion of its dynamic program of activities. Glucksman Ireland House is celebrating their 25th anniversary with programming focusing on Irish-Jewish themes. This theme pays tribute to Loretta Brennan Glucksman and the late Lewis L. Glucksman, who believed in the universality of the ethnic and immigrant experience and creating dialogue between immigrants of different backgrounds.
