Princeton University’s Fund for Irish Studies continues its 2024-2025 series with “A History of Ireland in 10 Poems,” presented by Paul Muldoon, Howard G.B. Clark ’21 University Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University, on November 15 at 4:30 p.m. at the James Stewart Film Theater at 185 Nassau Street. The event is free and open to the public; no tickets are required. The theater is an accessible venue, and guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week prior to the event date.

Through the prism of his own poems, Muldoon will offer a brief survey of Irish history from earliest times to the present day. This illustrated lecture will feature poems by Muldoon on the Vikings, the Normans, the English, the Troubles of the second half of the 20th century, as well as more recent events in Ireland.

Paul Muldoon. Photo credit: Christine Harris

Muldoon, an internationally renowned poet, was born in County Armagh in 1951 and now lives in New York City. He has taught at Princeton for 35 years. He is the author of 15 collections of poetry including Joy in Service on Rue Tagore, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and Faber and Faber in 2024. Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for his ninth collection of poems, Moy Sand and Gravel, he has been described by The Times Literary Supplement as “the most significant English-language poet born since the second World War.” Among his other awards are the 1972 Eric Gregory Award, the 1980 Sir Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award, the 1994 T.S. Eliot Prize, the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Poetry, the 2004 American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the 2004 Shakespeare Prize, the 2006 European Prize for Poetry, the 2015 Pigott Poetry Prize, the 2017 Queens Gold Medal for Poetry, and the 2020 Michael Marks Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Literature and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The founding chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts, Muldoon was also the founder and past chair of the Fund for Irish Studies.

The Fund for Irish Studies Series is co-chaired this year by Jane Cox, Director of Princeton’s Program in Theater & Music Theater, and Robert Spoo, Princeton’s Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor in Irish Letters.

The Fund for Irish Studies affords all Princeton students, and the community at large, a wider and deeper sense of the languages, literatures, drama, visual arts, history, and economics not only of Ireland but of “Ireland in the world.” The lecture series is co-produced by the Lewis Center for the Arts.

The Fund for Irish Studies website lists more information about the lecture series. Additional events scheduled for the year include: Conversation with the Abbey Theatre’s Artistic Director Caitríona McLaughlin and Head of Producing Jen Coppinger on December 6; Conversation with Abbey Theatre’s Literary and New Work Director Ruth McGowan and Associate Artist and actor Derbhle Crotty on February 7; a reading by novelist Colm Tóibín on February 21;  a reading by author Niall Williams on March 21; and the annual Robert Fagles Memorial Lecture by author, critic and scholar Fintan O’Toole.

The Fund for Irish Studies is generously sponsored by the Durkin Family Trust and the James J. Kerrigan Jr. ’45 and Margaret M. Kerrigan Fund for Irish Studies.

Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, lectures, and special events, most of them free, presented each year by the Lewis Center for the Arts.