While some critics grumbled at the perceived poetic injustice of New Labour's darling Andrew Motion becoming Britain's poet laureate, there were few who whinged about Paul Muldoon's recent appointment.
Last Monday the poet was elected unopposed to the 300-year-old position of Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, becoming only the second Irishman to hold the post. The first was Seamus Heaney, a former mentor of Muldoon. It was inevitable that over the years the Armagh-born writer's name would be mentioned by critics in the same breath as that of the North's best-known poet. But in terms of style the two could not be further apart.
Seamus Heaney's take on Muldoon arrives by fax in the Nobel laureate's unmistakable handwriting, and is unstinting in its praise.
"Paul Muldoon's work as a poet has created more excitement in other poets and attracted more imitators than any poet in English since W.H. Auden," he wrote. "He has moved from being something of a prodigy to being more like an abiding presence."
Of Muldoon's new job, he says he will "give the past new life".
In the face of such accolades and, now, his appointment to the highly respected Oxford seat, Muldoon exudes an almost studied kind of modesty. "It's always a little daunting to stand in any kind of election," he said of his appointment. "I remember a bit more drama in previous years, so the lack of controversy is somewhat bemusing."
According to Brendan Kenneally it is one of the challenges for Northern poets not to be confused with Heaney:
"Muldoon has been very determined in finding his own voice . . . Plato said poetry should be light and winged and holy, and Muldoon certainly has that lightness of touch."
Fellow poet Theo Dorgan says he would have made "a magnificent Renaissance cardinal". He added: "He is one of the most intelligent people writing poetry in English at the moment . . . A complete immersion in the works of Muldoon will change your attitude to the English language forever."
He is a poet's poet, says another admirer, sometimes recondite and always deeply aware of the formal tradition of poetry. He added that the better educated can more easily appreciate some of Muldoon's more erudite verse, and even the most scholarly of them are often forced to do their literary homework by the man they call the crown prince of puns.
The first-time reader of Muldoon's writings does not so much have to do homework as to complete a degree in the utterly obscure. It is not enough to have a dictionary by one's side when flicking through Annals of Chile, Hay or Quoof. What is needed is a lexicon of the ancient world or, even more useful (because Shakespeare-like his undisguised delight in the English language is such that he invents new words), a hitch-hiker's guide to Muldoonery.
All the hard work is worth it when the cloud of linguistic dexterity occasionally lifts to reveal such golden nuggets as his quirky assessment of his unborn baby girl (the sonogram "resembled nothing so much as a satellite-map of Ireland" he wrote), or his tears at her arrival documented in Birth. When Muldoon is emotionally naked, when the artful word manipulation appears secondary to the raw feeling, he is, for some, at his poetic best.
One of his most acclaimed poems, Incantata, comes from The Annals of Chile, which won the T.S. Eliot prize for best poetry collection of 1994. The elegy for Ruth Farl Powers, his friend who died tragically young, is a heartbreaking tribute to an extraordinary woman.
Paul Muldoon was born in Eglish, Co Armagh, and brought up near the Moy in Tyrone. His father was a gardener and mushroom farmer, his mother a schoolteacher. Both are writ large throughout Muldoon's work.
HE BROUGHT new meaning to the word prodigy when, at 21 and still a student at Queen's University, he had his first book published by Faber. He had begun writing poetry at the age of 12. His first was about a fortress near his home in Armagh.
"One weekend rather than write an essay I wrote a poem. It was read out in class and I became a poet, in so far as one becomes a poet," he has said.
A story from his university days is that he once sent Seamus Heaney, then a tutor at Queens, a collection of his poems with a note attached that read "Dear Mr Heaney, what is wrong with these poems?" After some time he got his reply: "Dear Mr Muldoon, there is nothing wrong with these poems." Most of the critical fraternity appear to agree.
In addition to his poetry volumes, he writes opera libretti which are works of literature in themselves. He has written children's books and translated poetry from the Irish, principally for Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill. His work has been honoured with a vast array of awards, including The Irish Times award for poetry in 1997.
On leaving university Muldoon worked as a radio producer with the BBC in Belfast. Although the Troubles are one of many themes in his work, he does not take sides and any references to the conflict are intentionally oblique.
In 1986 he left Northern Ireland for Princeton University, where he is a professor at the creative writing department where Toni Morrisson also works. He lives in New Jersey with his second wife, the poet and novelist Jean Hanff Korelitz. His new job will net him around £5,000 a year and for this he must give one public lecture every term. Fans are already salivating at the thought of what Muldoon might hold forth about at Oxford. Given his track record, it will be nothing if not a thoroughly unique appraisal of English language poetry.