Poetry Ireland
Muldoon’s Picnic
Poetry, prose & music from Paul Muldoon & Rogue Oliphant with Roddy Doyle, Hugh Buckley, Liz Nugent & Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh
After a successful Irish tour in 2017, 2019, and again in 2022, as well as ten sold-out seasons at the Irish Arts Center in New York, Muldoon’s Picnic comes to Dún Laoghaire as part of a national tour. An omnium-gatherum of poetry, prose and music, Muldoon's Picnic is a cabaret-style evening, by turns witty, exuberant, and sophisticated, hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, "the most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War" (The Times).
Devised and developed by the acclaimed Irish poet Paul Muldoon, the show is hosted by Muldoon and house band Rogue Oliphant - a collective of musicians and composers including Chris Harford (Three Colors, Band of Changes), Cáit O’Riordan (The Pogues), David Mansfield (Bob Dylan, The Alpha Band), Ray Kubian (Electric Six, Chris Forsyth) and Warren Zanes (Del Fuegos).
Muldoon will be joined on the night by Dublin-born novelist, dramatist, screenwriter and Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle, guitarist, composer and author Hugh Buckley, Irish language poet Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh and author and crime novelist Liz Nugent.
The title Muldoon’s Picnic refers to a popular 19th-century New York vaudeville act, which inspired the New York based Paul Muldoon to begin hosting these carefully blended evenings of literature and music back in 2014. Paul Muldoon describes Muldoon’s Picnic as a direct response to that ancient impulse to perform, to share, to make one’s own amusement;
“It’s one of our most basic instincts; to listen to a song, listen to a poem. Even in this era when people have their noses stuck in their tablets, it still works.”