Paul Muldoon: ‘Putin’s assault on Ukraine is an assault on us all. This poem is my way of enlisting’

You have recently been announced as the next Ireland Professor of Poetry. What does the role mean to you and how do you intend to approach it?

It means a lot to me, actually, partly because it’ll represent a kind of intellectual homecoming. That risks sounding a bit grandiose, I suspect, but it’s a risk I don’t mind taking. And it’s meant in a spirit of humility; I’m one of those professors who has at least as much to learn from students as I have to teach them.

[ Paul Muldoon announced as new Ireland Professor of Poetry ]

You have written a very powerful poem, Near Izium, dedicated to your fellow writer Andrei Kurkov, about Russia’s war on Ukraine, which The Irish Times will publish on December 31st. Are there particular challenges to writing poetry about current events?

The biggest challenge, paradoxically, is how to be current without being outdated in a month’s time. When I was in my teens, in the 1960s, I wrote a poem that referred to a “hovercraft”. Very cutting edge! Now no one has the slightest idea what it means. With regard to Near Izium, I couldn’t not write this poem. Putin’s assault on Ukraine is an assault on all of us. My first impulse was to join up but, of course, that’s not practical. This poem is my way of enlisting.

A conflict much closer to home, the 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland, has inspired, if that is the right word, poems by yourself and many others. How did you approach it? Which poems stand out for you and why?

One of the things about being from the North is that one’s forced again and again – as a citizen, never mind as a poet – to figure out how one feels about things. Not necessarily arriving at a conclusion, of course. Like most poets from the North, I have no single, overarching position. I’m more like a journalist, responding from day to day. One poem might focus on an act of sectarianism by the B-Specials, another on some aspect of the militant republican psych. When you get right down to it, I’m probably most like a comedian. It’s through the prism of comedy that who we truly are becomes clear. We understand more about Northern Ireland from one season of Derry Girls than a thousand Widgery reports.

[ Bono and Paul Muldoon get personal about their fathers ]

You have taught at some of the most prestigious universities in Britain and in the US. How would you compare the two?

Universities are universities. More importantly, 18-year-olds are 18-year-olds.

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You are married to a writer, the novelist Jean Hanff Korelitz. Has that influenced your own writing?

My wife helps me a lot. She seems to have absolutely no problem in telling me where I’ve gone wrong in my latest poem. That sometimes hurts a little but, in general, it’s a blessing.

You have toured Muldoon’s Picnic all over Ireland with your band Rogue Oliphant. Tell me about this project and what have been the highlights?

Muldoon’s Picnic is named after a variety show that was very popular in New York at the end of the 19th century. I’ve been running it at the Irish Arts Center in New York since 2014, though I’ve done versions of it around the world. We usually have a poet, a prose fiction writer, a musician. It’s reminiscent of the kind of entertainment that happened quite naturally in houses in Ireland when I was a child – locals getting together for recitations, fiddle tunes, endless ballads. It’s something we miss in the iPhone era.

[ Muldoon’s Picnic: a variety show from a Pulitzer winner ]

What is your current project?

I’m just finishing editing The Faber Book of the Sonnet and a collection of essays entitled The Eternity of the Poem. The essays were written over the last 20 years or so. They should be out in the next year or two. My new collection of poems is also coming towards completion. It’s called Joy in Service on Rue Tagore and it’ll probably be published in 2024.

Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?

I certainly have. One that springs to mind is a visit to the grave of Akira Kurosawa in Kamakura. Or Pablo Neruda’s house on the coast of Chile.

What is the most remarkable place you have visited?

There are quite a few contenders for most remarkable place. The opera house in Manaus, Angkor Wat, Robben Island, the killing fields of Cambodia, Uluru, the Altai Mountains in western Mongolia. Sitting alone on the rear deck of a ship halfway across the Pacific with an albatross gliding about in the ship’s wake.

[ Paul Muldoon: ‘There are great writers who never win anything’ ]

Your most treasured possession?

One of my most treasured possessions is WB Yeats’ application to the Incorporated Stage Society in London in 1904. Yeats signs it in three separate places. Another no less treasured possession is my father’s scythe.

What is your favourite quotation?

My favourite quotation is from Thoreau’s Walden: We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon.