18 Facts About Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon has published more than thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T S Eliot Prize.

Paul Muldoon held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 to 2004 and has served as president of the Poetry Society and poetry editor at The New Yorker.

Paul Muldoon's father worked as a farmer and his mother was a school mistress.

In 1969, Paul Muldoon read English at Queen's University Belfast, where he met Seamus Heaney and became close to the Belfast Group of poets which included Michael Longley, Ciaran Carson, Medbh McGuckian and Frank Ormsby.

Paul Muldoon met his first wife, fellow student Anne-Marie Conway, and they were married after their graduation in 1973.

For thirteen years, Paul Muldoon worked as an arts producer for the BBC in Belfast.

In 1987, Paul Muldoon emigrated to the United States, where he taught in the creative writing program at Princeton.

Paul Muldoon is married to novelist Jean Hanff Korelitz, whom he met at an Arvon writing course.

Paul Muldoon has two children, Dorothy and Asher, and lives primarily in New York City.

Paul Muldoon's poetry is known for his difficult, sly, allusive style, casual use of obscure or archaic words, understated wit, punning, and deft technique in meter and slant rhyme.

Paul Muldoon has been awarded fellowships in the Royal Society of Literature and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the 1994 T S Eliot Prize; the 1997 Irish Literature Prize for Poetry, and the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Excellence in Poetry.

Paul Muldoon was shortlisted for the 2007 Poetry Now Award.

Paul Muldoon has not since published a poem of comparable length, but a new trend is emerging whereby more than one long poem appears in a volume.

Paul Muldoon's poem is inspired by Southey's work Madoc, about a legendary Welsh prince of that name.

Paul Muldoon has contributed the librettos for four operas by Daron Hagen: Shining Brow, Vera of Las Vegas, Bandanna, and The Antient Concert.

Paul Muldoon's interests have not only included librettos, but rock lyrics as well, penning lines for the band The Handsome Family as well as co-writing the title track of Warren Zevon's album My Ride's Here.

Paul Muldoon writes lyrics for his own Princeton-based rock bands.

Muldoon has edited a number of anthologies, including The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present by Paul McCartney, published in 2021, written two children's books, translated the work of other authors, performed live at the Poetry Brothel.