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Date: October 1, 1997
Paul Muldoon Wins Irish Times Literature Prize for Poetry
PRINCETON, N.J., October 1 -- Paul Muldoon, director of the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University, has won the 1997 Irish Literature Prize for Poetry sponsored by The Irish Times , the Dublin-based newspaper announced today.
Muldoon won for his 1996 volume New Selected Poems 1968-1994 (Faber and Faber, London). The newspaper cited the manner in which the collection "highlights Muldoon's witty, personal voice and inventive use of language, which often draws on daily routine and the topical." The citation continued: "Muldoon's quizzical feel for his native Ulster is evident in poems possessing a strongly narrative, even anecdotal quality. This engaging and challenging volume includes many instances of adroitly intellectual wordplay and literary cross-references."
Muldoon won the 1995 T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize for The Annals of Chile (1994). His published works also include: Why Brownlee Left (1980), Selected Poems 1968-83 (1986), Meeting the British (1987) and Madoc (1990) .
"I am absolutely thrilled by this prize, particularly since it is Irish," said Muldoon. "While I've had a number of honors in Britain and the United States, this is the first award I've had in my own country. It means a great deal to me."
Muldoon was born in County Armagh in 1951. Faber and Faber published his first collection of poems, New Weather , while he was still a student at Queen's University, Belfast, in 1973. After working for several years as a radio producer for BBC Northern Ireland, Muldoon taught writing in England. In 1987 he came to the United States and taught at Columbia, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst before joining the Princeton faculty in 1990. He became director of Princeton's Creative Writing Program in 1993 and a full professor in the Council of the Humanities and in Creative Writing in 1995. He lives in Princeton Township.
Work eligible for the poetry prize could be in either English or Irish and published in Ireland, the United Kingdom or the United States between August 1, 1995, and July 31, 1997. The prize carries a cash award of 5,000, or roughly $8,000. Prizes are also awarded in fiction and non-fiction categories. Former Irish President Patrick Hillery will honor the authors at a ceremony in Dublin on November 20. The authors will read from their works at the Irish Film Centre, Dublin, on November 19.
The short list for the poetry prize included John Montague's Collected Poems and Eavan Boland's Collected Poems .
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