Literary Birthday – 20 June – Paul Muldoon

Happy Birthday, Paul Muldoon, born on 20 June 1951.

Paul Muldoon Quotes

1. I think a book should be a piece of engineering or architecture in itself.
2. I think one of the great things about being a writer is the extent to which it allows us to invent ourselves. It’s like being in a witness-protection program.
3. I’m still very conscious of coming from a society where storytelling was much prized and praised. I was reminded the other day that the Celts had a god of eloquence by the name of Ogmios. Ogmios was still lurking in the back of the minds of my neighbours. They loved poems, songs, good stories. And still do.
4. Words want to find chimes with each other, things want to connect.
5. I don’t know if I’ve ever found a voice. In fact, I’m rather sceptical of that idea having any currency. Each poem demands its own particular voice. It’s not as if one size fits all.
6. I suppose I was very conscious, in writing for radio and television, of the necessity to communicate immediately what one has to say.
7. The point at which the poem should really begin is often where, in some other intellection, it might have ended. I never, for example, save my ‘big’ ideas for down the road. I start with the big idea and see how much further I can go.

Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet and professor of poetry, as well as an editor, critic, playwright, lyricist and translator. he has published over 30 collections. He has received many awards, including a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. Moy Sand and Grave was the winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His latest work is Joy in Service on Rue Tagore. Muldoon served as Professor of Poetry at Oxford University from 1999 to 2004 and as poetry editor of The New Yorker from 2007 to 2017. Between 1987 and 2025 he taught at Princeton University where he is the Howard G.B. Clark ’21 Professor Emeritus. Muldoon is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is married to Jean Hanff Korelitz. Visit his website.

Source for image: lmoledro, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson
Please click here for our Literary Birthday Calendar