Paul Muldoon
From Freepedia
Paul Muldoon (born June 20, 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.
Contents |
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. Often a single and considerably longer poem is placed at the end of a volume. Muldoon's most recent collections have, however, included more than one long poem.
Madoc: A Mystery, among Muldoon's most difficult works, 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; the title comes from Southey's poem Madoc, about a legendary Welsh prince of that name.)
Awards¹
- 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
References
- ¹ from Paul Muldoon at www.contemporarywriters.com
External links
- Paul Muldoon's official Web site
- Aosdána short biogaphy
- Griffin Poetry Prize biography, including audio clip
