Paul Muldoon By Marcus Bryan

Paul Muldoon is in possession of one of the highest reputations in contemporary poetry. He has won both the T.S. Eliot and Pulitzer prizes, and according to Sean O‘Brien, who provided his introduction at Friday’s reading at King’s Hall, is perfectly capable of rhyming ‘dog’ with ‘cat’.

One might think, then, that this tidal wave of critical acclaim portends great swathes of deadly serious, occasionally headache-inducing verse not unlike that of Eliot, whose eponymous prize he won. Fortunately, this is far from the case. Both Muldoon’s poetry and on-stage persona are laid-back and effortlessly amusing; he slips almost unnoticeably between readings and conversing with the crowd, and the experience of listening to one of his poems is almost like listening to a friend telling an anecdote, albeit a friend who’s far more original in his use of language, and has an ability to coax the profound out of a tale that at first seems like nonsense.

Anyone with even a passing interest in poetry would be well recommended to pick up one of Muldoon’s ten collections from the library, and see for themselves that his work is equally worthy of popular acclaim as well as critical.