Paul Muldoon, Lancaster University’s Distinguished Visiting Professor of Poetry, has been announced as the next Ireland Professor of Poetry.

The announcement was made at a small reception hosted by the President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, in Áras an Uachtaráin.

Professor Paul Muldoon is the ninth Ireland Professor of Poetry, taking over from the current holder, Frank Ormsby. The position will run until November 2025.

The Ireland Chair of Poetry Trust was established in 1998 following the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Seamus Heaney.

It was felt that this honour should be marked every three years by choosing a poet of distinction to hold the position of Ireland Chair of Poetry.

The Chair is jointly held between Queen’s University Belfast, Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin, as well as the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.

Professor Muldoon said: “To be a poet at all is to be a professor of poetry. In this case, it’s especially gratifying to have the opportunity to formalize that professing, that ‘declaring openly’, of how poetry has been the central spiritual practice of my life.”

Professor Paul Muldoon was born in County Armagh in 1951 and studied at Queen’s University Belfast. He is the author of fourteen full-length collections of poetry. He has won major poetry awards, including the John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence, the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, the Pulitzer Prize and the Seamus Heaney Award for Arts and Letters. He served as poetry editor of the New Yorker from 2007 to 2017.

Since 1987, Paul Muldoon has lived in the United States, where he is Howard G.B. Clark Professor of the Humanities and Founding Chair of the Peter B. Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University.

He has also published collections of criticism, children’s books, opera libretti, song lyrics, and works for radio and television and recently, with the support of Poetry Ireland, he toured Muldoon’s Picnic all over Ireland together with his band Rogue Oliphant.

Chair of the Ireland Chair of Poetry Trust Liam Hannaway said: “I am delighted to witness Paul joining the great line of fantastic Irish poets who have held the position of Ireland Professor of Poetry and wish him good fortune in his work. The announcement of his appointment by President Higgins at Áras an Uachtaráin is fitting given the prestigious nature of this appointment by the Ireland Chair of Poetry Trust.”

Professor Muldoon was appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor at Lancaster in 2014. His work at Lancaster, with the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing, takes the form of a mix of undergraduate lectures, MA workshops, tutorials with PhD students, and public readings.

Later this month Professor Muldoon will take part in an open event at The Storey in Lancaster on the American poet, novelist, and short story writer Sylvia Plath.

To book tickets on EventBrite please go to: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sylvia-plath-heather-clark-sarah-corbett-paul-muldoon-tickets-502472467677