Paul Muldoon was born in 1951 in Co. Armagh and educated in Armagh and at the Queen’s University of Belfast. From 1973 to 1986 he worked as a radio and television producer for the BBC. Since 1987 he has lived in the United States, where he is now Howard G. B. Clark 21 Professor at Princeton University and Chair of the Peter B. Lewis Center for the Arts. In 2007 he was appointed Poetry Editor of The New Yorker. Between 1999 and 2004 he was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford, where he is an honorary Fellow of Hertford College.
 Paul Muldoon’s main collections of poetry are New Weather (1973), Mules (1977), Why Brownlee Left (1980), Quoof (1983), Meeting The British (1987), Madoc: A Mystery (1990), The Annals of Chile (1994), Hay (1998), Poems 1968-1998 (2001), Moy Sand and Gravel (2002), Horse Latitudes (2006), and Maggot (2010).
  A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Paul Muldoon was given an American Academy of Arts and Letters award in literature for 1996. Other recent awards are the 1994 T. S. Eliot Prize, the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, the 2003 Pulitzer Prize, the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Excellence in Poetry, the 2004 American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the 2004 Shakespeare Prize, the 2005 Aspen Prize for Poetry, and the 2006 European Prize for Poetry. He has been described by The Times Literary Supplement as “the most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War”. Paul Muldoon is a Visiting Professor at the University of Ulster.

• Knowing My Place (Portrush: Honest Ulsterman 1971) [pamphlet].
• New Weather (London: Faber & Faber 1973), 56pp. [ded. ‘for my Fathers and Mothers’]. and Do. [rep.] (London: Faber & Faber 1994).
• Spirit of Dawn (Belfast: Honest Ulsterman [1975], pamphlet.
• with James Simmons, Out of the Blue: A Selection of Poems and Songs (Belfast: NI Arts Council 1974).
• Mules (London: Faber; Winston Salem: Wake Forest UP 1977), 59pp. [‘for Anne-Marie’].
• Names and Addresses (Belfast: Ulsterman 1978).
• Immram (Dublin: Peter Fallon & Andrew Carpenter 1980) [ltd. edn. of 174 copies].
• Single Ladies: Sixteen Poems (Devon: Interm 1980).
• Why Browlee Left (London: Faber & Faber; Winston Salem: Wake Forest UP 1980) [incl. “Immram”].
• The O-O’s Party: New Year’s Eve (Oldcastle: Gallery 1981).
• Quoof (London: Faber; Winston Salem: Wake Forest UP 1983) [incls. “The More a Man has the More a Man Wants”].
• The Wishbone (Oldcastle: Gallery 1984) [pamphlet].
• Mules and Early Poems (Winston Salem: Wake Forest UP 1985).
• Meeting the British (London: Faber & Faber 1987).
• Madoc: A Mystery (London: Faber & Faber 1990; NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1991), 261pp. [ded. “for Jean”; based on Southey’s “Madoc”, 1815].
• Walking a Line (London: Faber & Faber 1994).
• The Prince of the Quotidian (Oldcastle: Gallery; Winston-Salem: Forest UP 1994), 41pp.
• The Annals of Chile (London: Faber & Faber 1994), 191pp. [incl. “The Sonogram” and “Incantata: For Mary Farl Powers” - as infra].
• Ambient Starlight (Oldcastle: Gallery 1995), 48pp.
• The Last Thesaurus (London: Faber & Faber 1995) [for children].
• The Noctuary of Narcissus Batt (London: Faber & Faber 1997).
• Hay (Faber & Faber 1998), 140pp.
• Poems 1968-1998 (London: Faber & Faber 2001), 490pp.
• Moy Sand and Gravel (London: Faber & Faber 2002), 90pp.
• Horse Latitudes (London: Faber & Faber 2006), 112pp.
• General Admission (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 2006), 104pp. [incl. “My Ride’s Here”, with Warren Zevon].
• When the Pie was Opened [The Cahiers Ser.] (USA: Sylph Editions 2008), 44pp. ;
• Wayside Shrines (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 2009), 44pp., ill. [by Keith Wilson; ltd signed edn of 400; 350 for sale];
• Maggot (London: Faber & Faber 2010), 120pp.
• The Word in the Street (London: Faber & Faber 2013). q.pp.
• One Thousand Things Worth Knowing (London: Faber & Faber 2015), 128pp.
• Rising to the Rising (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 2016), 48pp.
• Frolic and Detour (London: Faber & Faber 2019), 130pp.; Do. (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2019), 144pp. [Faber pb. 2022, 144pp.]
• Howdie Skelp (London: Faber & Faber 2021)

• Selected Poems 1968-1983 (London: Faber & Faber 1986; NY: Ecco 1987;), and Do. [rep. ed.] (NY: Noonday 1993).
• New Selected Poems 1968-1994 (London: Faber & Faber 1996), 183pp. [500 hb. copies].
• Selected Poems 1968-2014 (London: Faber & Faber 2016), 228pp.

• trans. two poems by Michael Davitt, in Ireland and the Arts, ed. T. P. Coogan [Special Issue of Literary Review] (London: Namara Press 1984), pp.161-63.
• trans. The Astrakhan Coatby Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, [bilingual edn.] (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 1991; rep. 1992), and Do. [ another edn.] (Winston-Salem, NC: Forest UP 1993).
• trans. The Fifty Minute Mermaid, by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 2007), 166pp. [bilingual edn.].
• Lamentations (Gallery Press 2017) [trans. of 18th c. Irish Poetry - The Churchyard at Creggan; The Lament for Art O"Leary; Ben Gunn; Typhoid Mary; Olagón]
• with Breen Ó Conchubhair, Bone and Marrow (Wake Forest UP 2022.) [bilingual Irish-English anthology]

See also translations from Irish in Gregory A. Schirmer, ed., After the Irish: An Anthology of Poetic Translation (Cork UP 2009).

• ed. The Scrake of Dawn: Poems by Young People from Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff/NI Arts Council 1979).
• ed. Faber Book of Contemporary Irish Verse (London: Faber & Faber 1986).
• ed. The Essential Byron (NY: Ecco Press 1989).
• ed., Faber Book of Beasts (London: Faber & Faber 1997), 295pp.

• Shining Brow: An Opera in Two Acts (London: Faber; Boston ECS 1993), 86pp. [for Daon Hagen].
• Six Honest Serving Men (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 1995) [commissioned & produced in Princeton].
• Vera of Las Vegas (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 2001), 53pp.

• ‘Paul Muldoon Writes …’, in Poetry Book Society Bulletin, 118 (Autumn 1982), cp.2.
• To Ireland, I (Oxford: Clarendon Press 2000), 213pp.
• Paul Muldoon, The End of the Poem (London: Faber & Faber 2006), 432pp.
• contrib. to Yeats Annual: Lectures in Honour of Eamon Cantwell [University College Cork/ESB International Annual W. B. Yeats Lectures Ser.] (2003-2008), with Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, John Kelly, Bernard O’Donoghue, Helen Vendler. et al. [see under Yeats - Commentary - infra].
• “Covid comfort: Paul Muldoon on Derek Mahon’s Everything Is Going to Be All Right”, in The Irish Times (23 Nov. 2021) [see copy as attached].

• Paul Muldoon & Ted Hughes [Faber Poetry Cassette] (London: Faber & Faber 1982).
• with Czeslaw Milosz, Czeslaw Milosz and Paul Muldoon Reading Their Poems (Washington DC: Library of Congress 1991).

‘Flock of Robins’, in HU (June 1972); ‘Glass Boat’, in HU (Sept. 1972); ‘Names and Addresses’, in HU (1978); ‘Aisling’, in HU (Dec. 1981); ‘Main-mast’ in HU (May 1984) [Selected].

• “Five Poems” [‘Bears’; ‘Tibet’; ‘Toxophius’; ‘Pandas’, and ‘Wolves’], in Times Literary Supplement (10 Feb. 1984), p.137.
• “Paul Klee, They’re Biting”, in P. Adams, ed., With a Poet’s Eye: A Tate Gallery Anthology (Tate Gallery Publs. 1986) [commissioned poem, later incl. in “Meeting the British”]
• translations from the Romanian of Marin Sore[s]cu, with Ted Hughes, in Irish Review, 1 (1986), pp.76-80.
• ‘A Mobile’ [poem] , in Times Literary Supplement (8 Jan. 1993) [q.p].
• “The Hug” [‘i.m. Joseph Brodsky’], in Times Literary Supplement (9 Feb. 1996), p.31.
• “News Headlines from the Homer Noble Farm”, in Last Before America : Irish and American Writing: Essays in Honour of Michael Allen, ed. Fran Brearton & Eamonn Hughes (Belfast: Blackstaff Press 2001), pp.80-83.

• Alan Jenkins, Paul Muldoon [Contemporary Writers Ser.] (London: British Council 1988), [pamph.].
• Clair Wills, Reading Paul Muldoon (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe 1999), 222pp.
• Tim Kendall & Peter McDonald, eds., Paul Muldoon: Critical Essays (Liverpool UP 2004), 224pp. [see contents].
• Jefferson Holdridge, The Poetry of Paul Muldoon (Liffey Press 2008), 232pp.
• Anne Karhio, “Slight Return”: Paul Muldoon’s Poetics of Place (Oxford: Peter Lang 2017).
• Alex Alonso, Paul Muldoon in America: Transatlantic Formations (Oxford UP 2021), 240pp.
  

• Michael Allen, ‘Horse People and Others’ [review of Mules] in Honest Ulsterman, 56 ([1977]), p.136.
• Seamus Heaney, ‘The Mixed Marriage: Paul Muldoon’, in Preoccupations: Selected Prose, 1968-1978 (London: Faber & Faber 1980), pp.211-213.
• Alan Hollinghurst, ‘Telling Tales’ [review of Why Brownlee Left], in Encounter, 56 (1981), pp.80-85.
• Seamus Heaney, ‘The Mixed Marriage: Paul Muldoon’, in Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978 (London: Faber & Faber 1981), pp.211-23.
• John Haffenden ‘A Conversation with Paul Muldoon’, in Haffenden, ed., Poets in Conversation with John Haffenden (London: Faber & Faber 1981), pp.130-40 [var. 42].
• Neil Corcoran, ‘The Shy Trickster’ [review], Times Literary Supplement (28 Oct. 1983), p.1180.
• Nick Roe, ‘Cock and Bull Stories?’ [review of Quoof], in North Magazine, 2 (1984), pp.44-45.
• John Kerrigan, ‘The New Narrative’ [review of Quoof], in London Review of Books (16-29 Feb. 1984), pp.22-23.
• Adrian Frazier, ‘Juniper, Otherwise Known: Poems by Paulin and Muldoon’ [ review of Tom Paulin, Liberty Tree and Quoof], in Éire-Ireland, 19, 1 (Spring 1984), pp.123-33 [var. 44; incl. Heaney, Kinsella, Muldoon, Richard Murphy, Paulin, et. al.].
• Bernard O’Donoghue, review of Quoof, in Poetry Review, 73, 4 (Jan. 1984), pp.53-54.
• Michael Donaghy, ‘A Conversation with Paul Muldoon’, in Chicago Review, 35, 1 (1985), pp.76-85.
• Dillon Johnston, ‘Towards “A Broader and More Comprehensive Irish Identity”, in Irish Poetry After Joyce (Illinois: Notre Dame UP 1985), pp.247-72.
• Douglas Dunn, ‘Manoeuvres’ [review of Faber Book of Contemporary Verse], in Irish Review, 1 (1986), pp.84-90.
• Bernard O’Donoghue, ‘Irish Plain-style’ [review of Thomas Kinsella, ed., New Oxford Book of Irish Verse and Paul Muldoon, ed., Faber Book of Contemporary Verse], in Poetry Review, 76, 3 (Oct. 1986), pp.51-53.
• Clair Wills, Nick Jenkins, and John Lancaster, ‘An Interview with Paul Muldoon’, in Oxford Poetry, 3.1 (Winter 1986-87), pp.14-20.
• Eamon Grennan, ‘A Whimful, Myopic Book’ [review of Faber Book of Contemporary Verse], in Honest Ulsterman, 82 (Winter 1986), pp.58-66.
• Robert H. Hofman, ‘The Recent Generation at Their Song’ [review of The Wishbone], in Times Literary Supplement (30 May 1986), pp.585-86.
• Edna Longley, ‘Varieties of Parable: Louis MacNeice and Paul Muldoon’, in Poetry in the Wars (Bloodaxe Books 1986), pp.211-43.
• Michael Allen, ‘Realism Meets Phantasmagoria’ [review of Meeting the British], in Honest Ulsterman, 84 (1987), pp.60-65.
• John Carey, ‘The Stain of Words’ [review of Seamus Heaney, The Haw Lantern’, and Paul Muldoon, Meeting the British], in The Sunday Times (21 June 1987), p.56.
• William A. Wilson, ‘Paul Muldoon and the Poetics of Sexual Difference’, in Contemporary Literature, 28, 3 (Fall 1987), pp 317-31.
• Neil Corcoran, ‘Flaneur along the Shopfronts’ [review of Meeting the British], in Poetry Review, 77: 3 (Autumn 1987), pp.44-49.
• Lachlan Mackinnon, ‘A Dream Diffused in Words’ [review of Madoc], in Times Literary Supplement (12-18 Oct. 1990), p.1105.
• Seán O’Brien, ‘Unique Particulars’ [review of Selected Poems], in Honest Ulsterman, 83 (Summer 1987), pp.96-97.
• O’Donoghue, ‘Voice-Shifts’ [review of Selected Poems], in Irish Review, 2 (1987), pp.121-25.
• William Scammell, ‘Mid-air Street?’ [review of Meeting the British], in Irish Review, 3 (1988), pp.144-46.
• John Goodby, ‘“Armageddon, Armagh-geddon”: Language and Crisis in the Poetry of Paul Muldoon’, in Birgit Bramsbäck & Martin Croghan, eds., Anglo-Irish and Irish Literature, Aspects of Language and Culture, II (Uppsala UP 1988), pp.229-36.
• Lynn Keller, ‘An Interview with Paul Muldoon, in Contemporary Literature, 35, 1 (Spring 1994), pp.726-38.
• Blake Morrison, ‘“Way Down Upon the Old Susquehanna”: An Interview with Paul Muldoon’, in Independent on Sunday (28 Oct. 1990), p.37.
• Kathleen McCracken, ‘A Northern Perspective: Dual Vision in the Poetry of Paul Muldoon’, in Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 16, 2 (Dec. 1990), pp.92-103.
• John Banville, ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ [review of Derek Mahon, Selected Poems and Paul Muldoon, Madoc: A Mystery], in NY Review of Books (30 May 1991), pp.37-39.
• Neil Corcoran, ‘Strange Letters, Reading and Writing in Recent Irish Poetry’, in Paul Hyland & Neil Sammells, eds., Irish Writing, Exile and Subversion (London: Macmillan 1991), pp.234-57.
• Lucy MacDiarmid, ‘From Signifump to Kierkegaard’ [review of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, The Astrakhan Coat, trans. Muldoon], in New York Times (28 July 1991), p.14.
• Kevin Smith, ‘Lunch with Paul Muldoon’, in Rhinosceros, 4 (1991), pp.75-91 [interview].
• Dominique Gauthier, ‘Paul Muldoon: The Satirist’s Approach’, in Jacqueline Genet, ed., The Big House in Ireland (Dingle: Brandon. NY: Barnes & Noble 1991), pp.281-88.
• Clair Wills, ‘The Lie of the Land, Language, Imperialism, and Trade in Paul Muldoon’s Meeting the British’, in The Chosen Ground: Essays on the Contemporary Poetry of Northern Ireland, ed. Neil Corcoran (Bridgend: Seren Books 1992), pp.123-49.
• Richard Brown, ‘Bog Poems and Book Poems: Doubleness, Self-Transition and Pun in Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon’, in Corcoran, op. cit. (1992), pp.153-79.
• Elmer Andrews, ‘Some Sweet Disorder, the Poetry of Subversion’, in B. Doherty and C. Bloom, eds., Insight into Modern British Poetry (London: Macmillan 1992) [on Muldoon, Paulin, and McGuckian), q.pp.].
• Jacqueline McCurry, ‘“S’crap”: Colonialism Indicted in the Poetry of Paul Muldoon’, in Eire-Ireland, 27, 3 (1992), pp.92-109.
• Peter Sirr review of Shining Brow, in The Irish Times (27 Feb. 1993) [see extract].
• Clair Wills, Improprieties: Politics And Sexuality in Northern Irish Poetry (OUP 1993) 272pp. [readings of Tom Paulin, Medbh McGuckian, and Paul Muldoon].
• Lachlan Mackinnon, review of Walking a Line, in Times Literary Supplement (6 June 1994), p.7.
• Seán Dunne, review of The Annals of Chile and The Prince of the Quotidian in Irish Times (20 August 1994) [see extract].
• Hugh Haughton, ‘Lord of Red Herrings’ [review of The Annals of Chile], in Independent [UK] (9 Oct. 1994), ‘Books/Poetry’ [see extract].
• Ian Duhig, review of The Annals of Chile, in Fortnight (Sept. 1994) [q.p.].
• Patrick Barron, interview with Paul Muldoon, in Fortnight Review (Oct. 1994), pp.42-44 [see extract].
• Lawrence Norfolk, review of The Annals of Chile and The Prince of the Quotidian, in Times Literary Supplement (7 Oct. 1994), pp.32-33 [see extract].
• Jon Stallworthy, ‘Fathers and Sons’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, 2, 1 (Summer 1995), pp.1-16, espec. 13ff. [all on McNeice with Mahon, Longley, and Muldoon].
• Tim Kendall, ‘Parallel to the Parallel Realm: Paul Muldoon’s Madoc - A Mystery’, in Irish University Review (Autumn/Winter 1995), pp.232-41.
• Oonagh Warke, review of Six Honest Serving Men, in Books Ireland (May 1995), p.130 [see extract].
• Neil Corcoran, review of The Annals of Chile, in Irish Studies Review (Jan. 1996), pp.51-52 [see extract]
• Steven D. Putzel, ‘Fluid Disjunction in Paul Muldoon’s “Immram” and “The More a Man Has the More a Man Wants”’ [Papers on Language and Literature], 32, 1 (Edwardsville: Winter 1996), pp.85-92.
• Barbara Buchanan, ‘Paul Muldoon: “Who’s to Know What’s Knowable?”, in Elmer Andrews, ed., Contemporary Irish Poetry: A Collection of Critical Essays (London: Macmillan 1996), pp.310-27.
• Tim Kendall, Paul Muldoon (Bridgend Seren: Poetry Wales Press; Du Four 1996), 258pp.
• Stephen Magee, ‘It’s Always the Right Word: An Interview with Paul Muldoon’, in Honest Ulsterman, 102 (August 1996), pp.109-15.
• Carol Tell, ‘Utopia in the new World: Paul Muldoon’s America’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, 2, 2 (Spring/Summer 1996), pp.67-82.
• Dominique Gautier, ‘An Interview with Paul Muldoon’, in Études Irlandaises (Printemps 1997), pp.53-70.
• Peter McDonald, ‘Paul Muldoon and the Windlass-men’ [chap.], in Mistaken Identities: Poetry and Northern Ireland (Oxford: OUP 1997), pp.145-88.
• Tom Paulin, ‘The Strangeness of the Script: Paulin in Conversation with Sarah Fulford’, in Irish Studies Review (Summer 1997), pp.2-4 [see extract].
• Ian Gregson, Contemporary Poetry and Postmodernism: Dialogue and Estrangement (London: Macmillan 1997) [chap. on Muldoon].
• Helen Vendler, ‘Anglo-Celtic Attitudes’, in New York Review of Books (6 Nov. 1997), pp.57-60 [harsh review].
• Eric Korn, review of Faber Book of Beasts, in Times Literary Supplement (21 Nov. 1997).
• Peter Sirr, review Hay (1998), in The Irish Times (24 Oct. 1998).
• Nicholas Jenkins, ‘For “Mother” read “Other”’ [review of Hay], in Times Literary Supplement (29 Jan. 1999), p.9-10.
• Neil Corcoran, ‘A languorous cutting edge: Muldoon versus Heaney?’, in Poets of Modern Ireland: Text, Context, Intertext (Wales UP 1999), pp.121-36.
• Rachael Buxton, ‘‘Structure and Serendipity: The Influence of Robert Frost on Paul Muldoon’, in Aaron Kelly & Alan Gillis, eds., Critical Ireland: New Essays in Literature and Culture (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2001), pp.14-21.
• Harry Clifton, ‘Remembering the Redemptive Power of Art’, review of Paul Muldoon, Poems 1968-1998, in The Irish Times (26 May 2001), “Weekend” [see extract].
• Mitsuko Ohno, ‘Hokusai, Basho, Zen and More: Japanese Influences on Irish Poets’, in Journal of Irish Studies (IASIL-Japan), XVII (2002), pp.15-31; p.24-25.
• Peter Fallon, ‘Grains of lasting truth and beauty’, review of Moy Sand and Gravel, in The Irish Times ( 19 Oct. 2002 ), p.9 [see extract].
• Ian Kilroy, ‘Transatlantic Poet’ [interview-article], in The Irish Times (19 April 2003), Weekend, p.8 [see extract].
• Shane Murphy, ‘Sonnets, Centos and Long Lines: Muldoon, Paulin, McGuckian and Carson’, in Matthew Campbell, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish Poetry (Cambridge UP 2003), pp.189-208.
• Elmer Kennedy-Andrews, ed., Paul Muldoon: Poetry, Prose & Drama (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 2005), 304pp.
• Rajeev S. Patke, ‘Paul Muldoon’s “Incantata”: The “Post-” in “Postmodern”’, in Global Ireland: Irish Literatures for the New Millenium, ed. Ondrej Pilny & Clare Wallace [IASIL Conference 2004] (Prague: Litteraria Pragensia 2005), pp.61-73.
• Shane Alcobia-Murphy, Sympathetic Ink: Intertextual Relations in Northern Irish Poetry (Liverpool UP 2006), 284pp. [on Heaney, Muldoon & McGuckian];
• Elmer Kennedy-Andrews, ‘Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon: Omphalos and Diaspora’, in Writing Home: Poetry and Place in Northern Ireland, 1968-2008 (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer 2008), pp.83-117.
• Ryoji Okuda, Paul Muldoon: Poetics and Politics (Shumpusha Publishing 2009), 167pp.
• Florence Schneider, ‘Acutely Discomforting: Subversive Representation in Paul Muldoon’s Poetry’, in Sub-Versions: Trans-National Readings of Modern Irish Literature, ed. Ciaran Ross (Amsterdam: Rodopi Press 2010), q.pp.
• Eric Falci, ‘Triangular Muldoon’, in Continuity and Change in Irish Poetry, 1966-2010 (Cambridge UP 2012) [Chap. 2].
• Fran Brearton, ‘One Thousand Things to Know About Paul Muldoon’ [review], in The Guardian (6 Feb. 2015) [see extract].
• John McAuliffe, review of One Thousand Things Worth Knowing, in The Irish Times (25 Jan. 2015) [see extract]
• [....]
• Ruben Moi, Paul Muldoon and the Language of Poetry [Costerus New Series] (Leiden: Brill 2019) [treats major works from New Weather to A Thousand Things Worth Knowing, chap. by chap. on an opening available screen - e.g., Chapter 7: The Annals of Chile (pp.189-232; xml availlable at Brill - online; accessed 10.08.2022).
• Claire Wills, ‘On Paul Muldoon’, in London Review of Books (6 Feb. 2020) - available online; accessed 145.08.2022).

See also John Brown, In the Chair: Interview with Poets from the North of Ireland (Galway: Salmon Press 2002) [interview], and Heather Clark, The Ulster Renaissance: Poetry in Belfast 1962-1972 (Oxford: OUP 2007), 255pp., See also sundry reviews under Commentary, as infra. Also reviews by Peter Forbes, Independent [UK] (14 May 1987); Mick Imlah, Times Literary Supplement (4 Sept. 1987); John F. Deane, Sunday Independent, 12 July 1987; John Carey, Sunday Times (21 June 1987), and a film on Muldoon by Douglas Carson [q.d.].

When your lobster was lifted out of the tank
to be weighed
I thought of woad,
of madders, of fugitive, indigo inks,

of how Nerval
was given to promenade
a lobster on a gossamer thread,
how, when a decent interval

had passed
(son front rouge encor du baiser de la refine)
and his hopes of Adrienne

proved false,
he hanged himself from a lamp-post
with a length of chain, which made me think

of something else, then something else again.

—Meeting the British (London: Faber & Faber 1987, p.33.)

‘While Paris, the traitorous shepherd, her guest, / bore Helen over the waves, in a ship from Troy, / Nereus, the sea-god, checked the swift breeze / with an unwelcome calm, to tell / their harsh fate: “You’re taking a bird of ill-omen, / back home, whom the Greeks, new armed, will look for again, having sworn to destroy the marriage your planning / and the empire of old Priam. [...]”’

[ Available at Poetry in Translation [website] > Quintus Horatius Flaccus - online; See Latin original with older translation by Christopher Smart (1756) - as attached. ]

I was making my way home late one night
this summer, when I staggered
into a snow drift.

Her eyes spoke of a sloe-year,
her mouth a year of haws.

Was she Aurora, or the goddess Flora,
Artemidora, or Venus bright,
or Anorexia, who left
a lemon stain on my flannel sheet?

It’s all much of a muchness.

In Belfast’s Royal Victoria Hospital
a kidney machine
supports the latest hunger-striker
to have called off his fast, a saline
drip into his bag of brine.

A lick and a promise. Cuckoo spittle.
I hand my sample to Doctor Maw.
She gives me back a confident All Clear.

I
Where every town was a tidy town
and every garden a hanging garden.
A half could be had for half a crown.
Every major artery would harden

since every meal was a square meal.
Every clothesline showed a line of undies
yet no house was in dishabille.
Every Sunday took a month of Sundays

till everyone got it off by heart
every start was a bad start
since all conclusions were foregone.

Every wood had its twist of woodbine.
Every cliff its herd of fatalistic swine.
Every runnel was a Rubicon.

II
Every runnel was a Rubicon
and every annual a hardy annual
applying itself like linen to a lawn.
Every glove compartment held a manual

and a map of the roads, major and minor.
[...]

I
The sound box is made of a horse’s head.
The resonator is horse skin.
The strings and bow are of horsehair.

II
The morin khur is the thoroughbred
of Mongolian violins.
Its call is the call of the stallion to the mare.

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III
A call which may no more be gainsaid
than that of jinn to jinn
through jasmine-weighted air.

IV
A call that may no more be gainsaid
than that of blood kin to kin
through a body-strewn central square.

V
A square in which they’ll heap the horses’ heads
by the heaps of horse skin
and the heaps of horsehair.

We met at the summer solstice
when everything stood still
her sloping away like Iseult
left me over the hill
I raised the chamber in the mound
the oak-fringed sacred spring
that feeds the streams that run around
Tara of the kings.

She was through with carbon dating
stakeholders with no hair
she was through with monster meetings
in flats off Parnell Square
she was through with crowned and uncrowned
yew trees with countless rings
the ditch that used to run around
Tara of the kings.

Could we who endured the penal
and Edward Poyning’s laws
(never mind the beef tribunal)
now somehow be in awe

of a road running through the ground
on which stood our althing
and not ensure it run around
Tara of the kings?

We know the stone of destiny
was set up in this soil
now the soldiers of destiny
are set to bank the spoils
and lest they wish to be renowned
for rape and ravishing
they’ll not give us the runaround
on Tara of the kings.

We’re fated to be remembered
as spoilers of the dead
and though we seem quite unhampered
by honour or by dread
yet we are dread- and honour-bound
to our unborn offspring
to ensure the M3 run around
Tara of the kings.

A soundtrack of Shostakovich’s quacks, hoots, / pants and gasps. We will score a direct hit / on whomsoever would descecrate / that memorial on the outskirts / of Kyiv. A sacred memorial. Always on the outskirts. / Though we’ve lived for months in a dank / basement while our anti-tank / guns have staved off Putin’s bombardment, / living in that basement / and sleeping under the filthiest of bedspreads / won’t ever dampen our spirits. 6: It may be that the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks / have reduced the risk that his own tinderbox / will blow up in Putin’s face / yet he continues to threaten to light the fuse / as he tries to recreate the court of Peter the Great / in Leningrad, a Leningrad / complete with troubadours. We launch kamikaze / drones against Pegasus as one Ivan flung a goose / insult at a second Ivan / in that story by Nikolai Gogol. 

By the time you read this I’ll be gone
for a newspaper and quart of milk
never to return, a half-mowed lawn
leading to me as a scroll of silk

once led to the mulberry silkworm.
By the time you read this I’ll be gone
AWOL in spite of the fact, in terms
of domesticity, I’ve outshone

even the heedful trumpeter swan
that spends five weeks constructing a nest.
By the time you read this I’ll be gone
less because of some profound unrest

than my fascination with the Cree
and the sandhills of Saskatchewan
into which windswept immensity,
by the time you read this, I’ll be long gone.