I met Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley on the same day in 1968. I was sixteen at the time. Very exciting. They were reading at Armagh. One of my teachers brought me to meet them, introduced me, and I became friends with them. Paul Muldoon Read Quote
Believe it or not, one of the first poets I was aware of was Yeats. I recited ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ at a verse speaking competition when I was eight or nine. Paul Muldoon Read Quote
I spent about five years stuck in a room between the ages of 16 and 20 while I wrote the first book, which came out when I was 21. I should have been out playing tennis. Paul Muldoon Read Quote
I don’t shape trends, I’d say. I merely reflect them. I think the emphasis is on ‘them.’ I like variety in poetry. I love how it comes in so many guises. As rock lyric, as rap, as note on a fridge. Paul Muldoon Read Quote
The best poems come from the world, go through the poet, and go back in to the world. Paul Muldoon Read Quote
I was reared on American TV and films. There was a huge sense of occasion about going to the cinema in Moy in the late 1950s and early ’60s, and I absolutely loved those Hollywood sword-and-sandal movies like Ben-Hur and the dime-a-dozen cowboy-and-Indian films, as we then referred to them. Paul Muldoon Read Quote
The best thing anybody has ever done is to advise me against publishing a poem that shows me at less than my best, such as it is. That’s the kind of advice most of us resist but really should relish. Paul Muldoon Read Quote
Obviously one of the things that poets from Northern Ireland and beyond – had to try to make sense of was what was happening on a day-to-day political level. Paul Muldoon Read Quote
