Paul Muldoon: My proudest achievement is that my children are still talking to me

If I had to change something from my past, I think I’d have spent more time with my father and mother. When I left home to go to university, I barely looked back

The poet and playwright Paul Muldoon (Ireland/USA), New York, New York, March 2, 2020. Photograph © Beowulf Sheehan

I grew up in a new house my parents had built in a place called Keenaghan in North Armagh. My mother taught in St Peter’s School in Collegeland. My father was sometimes a day labourer, sometimes a market gardener, sometimes a mushroom grower. My parents had a huge impact on me. My mother was determined myself and my brother and sister improve ourselves. 

I was sent to elocution lessons and piano lessons. We weren’t allowed comics for the most part but intellectually stimulating magazines like Look and Learn and Finding Out. It meant I amassed a huge amount of information that was useless until it was suddenly useful.