Paul Muldoon was born in 1951 in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, and educated in Armagh and at the Queen's University of Belfast. From 1973 to 1986 he worked in Belfast as a radio and television producer for the British Broadcasting Corporation. Since 1987 he has lived in the United States, where he is now Howard G. B. Clark '21 Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University. In 1999 he was elected Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford. Paul Muldoon's main collections of poetry are New Weather (1973), Mules (1977), Why Brownlee Left (1980), Quoof (1983), Meeting The British (1987), Madoc: A Mystery (1990), The Annals of Chile (1994), Hay (1998), Poems 1968-1998 (2001) and Moy Sand and Gravel (2002). 

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Paul Muldoon was given an American Academy of Arts and Letters award in literature for 1996. Other recent awards are the 1994 T. S. Eliot Prize, the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Excellence in Poetry, and the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He has been described by The Times Literary Supplement as "the most significant English-language poet born since the second World War."

Lily: What first interested you in poetry?

PM: I got interested in poetry when I was a teenager, largely because I was under the impression that it would be easier to write a poem than a school essay. My poem was read out in class. It became a habit after that, one I’ve never shaken off.

Lily: Do you remember the first poem you wrote, and who you wrote it for?

PM: The first poem I wrote, when I was 12, was about Charlemont Fort, and I refer to it in “Horse Latitudes” in that phrase about the price of gasoline. I used the word gasoline in my  poem and was scolded for it because the word had no currency in Ireland forty years ago. It does now.

Lily: Which poets have influenced your work, and how?

PM: The biggest influence was John Donne, whom I read as a teenager. He’s the poet who excels in the farfetched metaphor, and the extended metaphor.

Lily: What inspires you to write?

PM: I’m inspired by anything and everything. The image of the mules having their vocal chords cut was what started me on “Horse Latitudes.”

Lily: Do you see any new poetic trends emerging in the world today? If so, do you find these new trends interesting or disturbing?

PM: Every poem should set a new trend. It’s very exciting to see the great range of poetries being written. I can’t stand poets who insist on there being only one way (theirs) of doing business.

Lily: What was your first thought upon winning the Pulitzer?

PM: My first thought was it’s someone playing a prank on me. I was thrilled, of course, but it’s old news now. As it should be.

Lily: You’ve received a number of literary acknowledgements and awards for your work. Do you ever lose the feeling of excitement in knowing that your poetry has been received well? Do you worry each time your latest work is published that maybe it won’t be so well received?

PM: I’m always worried about whether or not a poem is going to work. It always involves taking some sort of risk. Otherwise, it’s almost certainly of no interest.

Lily: What, in your opinion, is the purpose of poetry? Is the purpose the same for both the reader and the writer?

PM: To make sense of things. Same for writer and reader. They’re the same person.

Lily: When you’re giving lectures on poetry, what is one thing you hope every student in the room walks away knowing about the subject?

PM: How it’s only through ignorance and humility that one might write, or read, a poem.

Lily: Is there any one “rule” in writing poetry that must always be followed?

PM: The minute you establish a rule, something breaks it.

Lily: Do you find that the attitudes toward - and preferences of - poetry are different in the U.K. than they are in the U.S.? If so, in what way?

PM: Both areas have every lively scenes, I think. What’s interesting is the almost total randomness of which UK poets are published here, which US poets published there. But news travels eventually, I suppose.

Lily: In a hundred years, when people read and study your poetry, how do you hope they will summarize your work?

PM: I hope there’ll still be a half-habitable planet in a hundred years. I don’t think of people reading my poems in a hundred years time.

Lily: What effect do you think the internet - and particularly the emergence of online literary magazines - has had on the world of poetry?

PM: What’s vital is that more people have access to poetry. The internet’s a tool which brings more readers, I’d like to think, people who won’t be so scared of poetry.

Lily: What is your advice to aspiring writers?

PM: Don’t write about what you know. Write about what you don’t know. Don’t worry about finding your voice. Worry about finding a voice for each poem. Your voice will look after itself.