How to Read a Poem with Paul Muldoon

Do you find poetry intimidating? Do you race past the poems in THE NEW YORKER on your way to the fiction or the cartoons? Have you persuaded yourself that you’ll “just never get it?”

Since 2023, Pulitzer Prizewinning poet and former Poetry Editor of The New Yorker Paul Muldoon has led his extraordinary “How to Read a Poem” discussions at literary festivals and universities all over the world. At these very special gatherings, participants meet to discuss poems published only that week in literary journals and magazines, not just to glean their individual meanings but to reflect on where poetry as an art form has been – and where it’s going.

For nearly forty years, Paul Muldoon has been Howard G. B. Clark Professor at Princeton, teaching creative writing, Irish literature, songwriting and translation. He served as Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 to 2004 and Ireland Professor of Poetry from 2022 to 2025. He has taught at Cambridge University, University of St. Andrew, University of East Anglia, and Lancaster University. His fifteen major collections of poetry, published in America by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, include the Pulitzer Prizewinning MOY SAND AND GRAVEL and JOY IN SERVICE ON RUE TAGORE, a New York Times Notable Book of 2024. He is the editor of many anthologies of poetry, including, most recently, SCANTY PLOT OF GROUND: A BOOK OF SONNETS.

Poems for discussion will be distributed at the session. No preparation or knowledge of poetry is necessary. The only prerequisite? An open mind.

Tickets: $45

HOW TO READ A POEM is presented by BOOKTHEWRITER which hosts “Pop-Up Book Groups”, small conversations with prominent authors, in private homes in Manhattan. For more information on our upcoming events and to sign up for our mailing list: bookthewriter.com