Paul Muldoon has gathered a motley crew for an Eclectic Picnic

Paul Muldoon has gathered a motley crew of writers and musicians for a tour of Ireland, writes Alan O’Riordan.

THE paradoxical cultural status of poetry is reflected in the ease with which poets seem to get bums on seats, but the difficulty they seem to have getting books on shelves. We want poetry in our lives, we want to experience it. And yet, we seem reluctant to spend time alone in a room with it.

It’s a phenomenon that has made travelling showmen, if in a modest fashion, of many a poet.

Paul Muldoon is an exemplar. Indeed, he’s taken things up a notch, turning himself into a master of ceremonies for several years now with Muldoon’s Picnic, his “omnium-gatherum” of words and music, which began life in the Irish Arts Center in New York and will tour Ireland in August.

Typically, as we catch up over the phone from his home in New York, he’s just back from doing some readings.

“Readings are part of the job of being a poet these days,” he says, “I always find it interesting to be out and about. I’m sitting here today trying to write a couple of things, by myself, and it’s basically what one does as a writer. So it’s nice to go out there betimes and be with people. Connect with people. You can’t be by yourself all the time.”

Muldoon speaks of the two functions of a poem: one where it’s read inwardly, and one where’s read aloud.

“Particularly in the Irish context,” he says, “there is a long tradition of reading poems aloud, a long tradition of setting them to music, from the earliest bardic times. I like the idea of people experiencing poetry, so I don’t really mind in what context.”

BIG APPLE

Muldoon’s Picnic has had eight acclaimed seasons at the Irish Arts Center in New York.

Its name comes from a coincidence that hearkens back to 19th-century vaudeville. Muldoon cites Edward Harrigan, an Irish-American New Yorker known for his variety shows.

One of his most popular sketches, he says, was ‘Who Owns the Clothes Line?’. It contained a song, a parody of the Irish ward politician, called ‘Muldoon the Solid Man’. Related to that, Muldoon’sPicnic became the name of a much-toured comedy review.

It’s that eclectic spirit Muldoon hopes to preserve, and also the spirit of what he calls his favourite hours of radio from his childhood: the double bill of Ciarán Mac Mathúna’s Mo Cheol Thú and Sunday Miscellany.

“There’s nothing new in this, combining music and words,” Muldoon says.

“And, you know, curation is probably one of these words you hear a bit too much of these days. So what I try to do is just put something together. It’s all the same activity: putting together a poem, or a book, or a radio programme.”

There’s a hunger for this kind of live entertainment. Maybe I’m wrong in this but I’d certainly like to think that one of these days I’ll be able to walk down the street without being bumped into by someone on their mobile phone. You need to get off your phone and start enjoying real life.

The Irish incarnation of Muldoon’s Picnic takes in Cork and other centres, with guests ranging from Zadie Smith to Horslips, from John Banville to Duke Special, from Anne Enright to Glen Hansard.

Tying it all together is the house band, Rogue Oliphant — a collective including Chris Harford, Cait O’Riordan of The Pogues, David Mansfield (who toured with Bob Dylan’sRolling Thunder Revue) and RayKubian.

Muldoon has been known to pick up a guitar, but “these guys are too good to let me,” he jokes.

“It’s a fabulous lineup; they are brilliant. And they all are songwriters; each of them will be represented with a song. They are rockers, all of them. We have a few more like that lined up along the way too, like Horslips.”

DISTINCTIVE VOICE

Muldoon has been in the US since 1987. Along the way, he’s won a Pulitzer, been the New Yorker’s poetry editor and Oxford Professor of Poetry. His verse is eclectic.

Sometimes abstruse and allusive, sometimes playful, often fiendishly clever, or formally daring. He is, in some ways, a poet’s poet. And, though closely identified with, if a little younger than, that great generation of Northern poets — Heaney, Longley, Mahon, et al — he has always been utterly distinct.

Living in the US for more than 30 years has perhaps helped widen his perspective, but he keeps close ties with Ireland.

“Ireland is not by any means perfect,” he says, “but Ireland is an exemplary nation at the moment. We have a few problems, of course, serious problems in the North where politicians are not talking to each other and thinking it’s okay.”

But in contrast, he says, the US is in deep trouble.

We’re in a situation where various ideas that would have seemed incontrovertible or to be taken for granted, like freedom of speech, are under threat. And so as someone who’s interested inlanguage, and as a citizen, one has to be exemplary in the way one uses it.

“And take people to task when they are misusing it, or telling lies, actually. I have no interest in being a public figure but one is almost forced to be. In fact, we all are at the moment no matter what we do. We all have to show up and speak out.”

ART AND POLITICS

We live in a time, then, when art and politics seem always to mix. Where even the idea of art has become politicised. But there is an eternal aspect to art that transcends any time and place. For Muldoon, it’s the factthat art “makes us understand who we are.”

That art, he says, “could be someone playing a fiddle in the back of a pub in what might be thought of as the middle of nowhere, or a child standing up to read a poem in the local parish hall. I think sometimes people give the impression that what happens, say, in the NationalConcert Hall, is more important than what happens in a bar in the back of beyond, or someone replacing a toilet, as is happening in my place at the moment. Art is not more important than these things, but it’s no less important. I think that’s the key.”

Hitting the road with Paul Muldoon

• Hawk’ s Well Theatre, Sligo, Aug 2: Guests include poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, acclaimed Belfast writer Wendy Erskine, traditional singer and song collector Len Graham, and Duke Special.
• Gate Theatre, Dublin, Aug 4: Guests include Michael Longley, Anne Enright, vocalist and actor Lisa Lambe, Martin Hayes, and Glen Hansard.
• Everyman Theatre, Cork, Aug 5: Guests include Zadie Smith, Northern Irish novelist and poet Nick Laird, and Horslips.
• Glor, Ennis, August 7: Guests include Declan O’Rourke, John Sheahan of the Dubliners, Nigerian-born, Longford-raised spoken word poet Felicia Olusanya, and journalist Fintan O’Toole.
• The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon, Aug 9: Guests include Belfast poet Stephen Sexton, folk singer Lisa O’Neill, and journalist and author Sinéad Gleeson.
• The Mac, Belfast, Aug 11: Guests include Moya Brennan, harpist Cormac de Barra, JohnBanville, and Leanne O’Sullivan.