zoom_in Click to enlarge

Paul Muldoon

▲ ▼

description Paul Muldoon Overview

Paul Muldoon is a poet from County Armagh in Northern Ireland whose work is known for intricate rhyme, compressed narratives, shifting references, and elaborate wordplay. He has published poetry, criticism, libretti, and song lyrics, and has worked as an editor and university teacher in both Ireland and the United States. His collection Moy Sand and Gravel received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and combines personal, historical, scientific, and linguistic material.

help Paul Muldoon FAQ

What poetry collections did Paul Muldoon publish?

Paul Muldoon's major collections include 'New Weather' (1973), 'Why Brownlee Left' (1980), 'The Annals of Chile' (1994), 'Moy Sand and Gravel' (2002, Pulitzer winner), 'Horse Latitudes' (2006), and 'Howdie-Skelp' (2021). He has also published libretti and children's verse. Many collections appeared from Faber and Faber in the UK and FSG in the U.S.

Why did Paul Muldoon win the Pulitzer Prize?

Paul Muldoon won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for 'Moy Sand and Gravel,' his ninth collection, published in 2002. The collection explores themes of identity, exile, and his Irish-American life (Muldoon moved to the U.S. in 1987). The poems combine formal experiment with personal reflection.

Where does Paul Muldoon teach?

Paul Muldoon has been a professor at Princeton University since 1987, where he chairs the Peter B. Lewis Center for the Arts and serves as the Howard G.B. Clark '21 University Professor in the Humanities. He previously taught at Queen's University Belfast. He has also been poetry editor of The New Yorker.

Is Paul Muldoon from Northern Ireland?

Yes, Paul Muldoon was born in 1951 in Portadown, County Armagh, in Northern Ireland, and grew up near The Moy. He is part of the Northern Irish poetic tradition alongside Seamus Heaney (his teacher at Queen's), Michael Longley, and Derek Mahon. He moved to the United States in 1987.