- Paul Muldoon has been named the winner of the Queen’s gold medal for poetry 2017
According to the report obtained from the www.theguardian.com/uk, the Northern Ireland-born writer has produced 12 major collections of poetry as well as children’s books and song lyrics.
The poet Laureate, Dame Carol Ann Duffy, said: “Paul Muldoon is widely acclaimed as the most original and influential poet of the past 50 years and is rightly celebrated alongside Seamus Heaney.
“His poetry displays a restless, playful brilliance, forever searching for new ways to channel his ideas and new language to dress them in.”
Muldoon was born in Portadown, County Armagh, in 1951 and published his first poetry collection in 1973. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1981 and has lived chiefly in the US for the last 30 years, teaching at Princeton University and more recently editing poetry for the New Yorker magazine, which he gave up earlier this year.
Duffy added: “He is ambitious, erudite, witty and musical. He can experiment with form and stand tradition on its head, craft a tender elegy or intimate love poem with equal skill.
“His work is of major significance internationally – poetry of clarity, invention, purpose and importance which has raised the bar of what’s possible in poetry to new heights.”
Muldoon is the youngest of a group of poets from Northern Ireland, including Heaney and Michael Longley, centred around Queen’s University in Belfast, who gained prominence in the 1970s. He delivered a tribute to Heaney at the Nobel prize winner’s funeral in Dublin in 2013.
The Queen will present Muldoon with his medal in 2018.
source www.theguardian.com/uk
