The son of a market gardener and a schoolteacher, Paul Muldoon grew up near a village called The Moy on the border of Counties Armagh and Tyrone, Northern Ireland. The oldest of three children, he describes himself as “a bit of an eccentric child, a little bit of the family mascot” who was given privileges such as his own tiny room, where he spent hours as a teenager reading and writing poetry. After studying at Queen’s University, he worked in Belfast as a radio and television producer for the BBC and moved to the United States in 1987. His most recent book, “Selected Poems 1968-2014,” published in November 2016, draws from 12 previous books of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Moy Sand and Gravel.” He has served as the poetry editor of The New Yorker since 2007.
What I think: Paul Muldoon
July 14, 2017
Muldoon is the Howard G.B. Clark ’21 University Professor in the Humanities, professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts and director of the Princeton Atelier. He has taught poetry at Princeton since 1987 and songwriting since 2013.
