Paul Muldoon in America: Transatlantic Formations

This study of Paul Muldoon’s American career discusses the poetry, criticism, and other works published up to and including his 2015 collection One Thousand Things Worth Knowing. It shows not only how important America has been to the Northern Irish poet’s creative imagination, but the essentially Transatlantic nature of his oeuvre, responsive to the cultural context of the USA as much as Britain and Ireland. The book raises questions about the Irish poet as westward voyager, about Irish-American cultural exchange, and about how departures for Muldoon seem to be a precondition for return, indeed returns of many different kinds. It will appeal to Muldoon’s American readers as well as a British and Irish audience, framing Muldoon as a transnational poet of place and displacement, and exploring the many creative departures, returns, and Transatlantic formations that followed his move to the United States in 1987.