Described by The Times Literary Supplement as "the most significant English-language poet born since the second World War," Paul Muldoon visits the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum on Monday, April 12. His lecture begins at 6:45 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
Muldoon, who has distinguished himself as a literary giant, received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for his collection of works Moy Sand and Gravel (2002). This acclaimed poet is known for his ever present innovation and wit, deftly handling themes that are profoundly personal by giving them a universal relevance and creating; a strong sense of place within the poem. Bridging the Atlantic, Muldoon works "a rich vein that extends from the rivery, apple-heavy County Armagh of the 1950s, in which he was brought up, to suburban New Jersey, on the banks of a canal dug by Irish navies, where he now lives."
Born in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, in 1951, Paul Muldoon studied at Queen's University, Belfast, and has worked for BBC Belfast as a radio and television producer. His major works include Mules (1977), Why Brownlee Left (1980), Quoof (1983), Meeting the British (1987), Madoc: A Mystery (1990), The Annals of Chile (1994), Hay (1998), and Poems 1968-1998 (2001).
In addition to the Pulitzer, Muldoon was awarded the T. S. Eliot Award for The Annals of Chile in 1994, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature in 1996, the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Excellence in Poetry, and the 2004 Shakespeare Prize. Paul Muldoon is currently Howard C.B. Clark '21 Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University and Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford.