Talking Heads - (The Poet's Chair: Writings from the Ireland Chair of Poetry) by Paul Muldoon (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A volume collecting Paul Muldoon's three Ireland Professor of Poetry lectures.

Though the three lectures given by Paul Muldoon as Ireland Professor of Poetry focus on three former holders of the chair--John Montague, Michael Longley, and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill--they also touch on a dizzying range of topics including David Byrne, Claddagh Records, decapitation, The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel, factory farming, Pierce Ferriter, incest among royals, Ivar the Boneless, James Joyce's "The Dead," Carl Jung, long addition, the Royston crow, Section 21 of the Broadcasting Act of Ireland, The Story of Mac Da Thó's Pig, The Voyage of Muldoon, war crimes by major poets, and the overly excitable Warren Zevon.

The Ireland Chair of Poetry was established in 1998 following the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Seamus Heaney and is supported by Queen's University Belfast, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and the Arts Council Án Chomhairle Ealaion. Other poets in the series include Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, John Montague, Paul Durcan, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Michael Longley, Harry Clifton, and Paula Meehan.

About the Author

Paul Muldoon was born in County Armagh in 1951. He now lives in New York. A former radio and television producer for the BBC in Belfast, he taught at Princeton University for thirty-five years. He is the author of fifteen collections of poetry, including Joy in Service on Rue Tagore. Among his awards are the 1972 Eric Gregory Award, the 1980 Sir Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award, the 1994 T. S. Eliot Prize, the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, the 2003 Pulitzer Prize, the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Poetry, the 2004 American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the 2004 Shakespeare Prize, the 2006 European Prize for Poetry, the 2015 Pigott Poetry Prize, the 2017 Queens Gold Medal for Poetry, and the 2020 Michael Marks Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Literature and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2024, he was elected a Saoi of Aosdána, an Irish fellowship of artists.