Paul Muldoon
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Paul Muldoon (b. 1951) is a Northern Irish poet. 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. 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 Northern Irish poet, living in the shadow of his friend Seamus Heaney. Since he won the Pulitzer Prize his reputation has grown: his work clearly stands on its own merits.
In 2003 Muldoon was awarded the 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.
Works
In 2003, Muldoon's published books were:
- New Weather (1973)
- Mules (1977)
- Why Brownlee Left (1980)
- Quoof (1983)
- Meeting the British (1987)
- Selected Poems 1968-1986 (1987)
- Madoc: A Mystery (1990)
- The Annals of Chile (1994)
- 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)
Most of these volumes were collections of shorter poems. Several, including Meeting the British and The Annals of Chile, contained collected shorter poems and one longer work.
Madoc: A Mystery, among Muldoon's most difficult work, 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.)
External links
- Paul Muldoon's official Web site (http://www.paulmuldoon.net/)
- Aosdána short biogaphy (http://www.artscouncil.ie/aosdana/biogs/literature/paulmuldoon.html)
- Griffin Poetry Prize biography, including audio clip (http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/shortlist_2003.php?t=5)