WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR POETRY 2003

Paul Muldoon's ninth collection of poems, his first since Hay (1998), finds him working a rich vein that extends from the rivery, apple-heavy County Armagh of the 1950s, where he was brought up, to suburban New Jersey, on the banks of a canal dug by Irish navvies, where he now lives. Grounded, glistening, as gritty as they are graceful, these poems seem capable of taking in almost anything, and anybody, be it a Tuareg glimpsed on the Irish border, Bessie Smith, Marilyn Monroe, Queen Elizabeth I, a hunted hare, William Tell, William Butler Yeats, Sitting Bull, Ted Hughes, an otter, a fox, Mr and Mrs Stanley Joscelyne, an unearthed pit pony, a loaf of bread, an outhouse, a killdeer, Oscar Wilde, or a flock of redknots. At the heart of the book is an elegy for a miscarried child, and that elegiac tone predominates, particularly in the elegant remaking of Yeats's 'A Prayer for My Daughter' with which the book concludes, where a welter of traffic signs and slogans, along with the spirits of admen, hardware storekeepers, flim-flammers, fixers and other forebears, are borne along by a hurricane-swollen canal, and private grief coincides with some of the gravest matter of our age.

Moy Sand and Gravel demonstrates Paul Muldoon's trademark ability to combine emotional affect, political statement, linguistic innovation, historic sensitivity and a hugely witty and amiable persona into a poetry of dancing music and intense perception.

About the Author
Paul Muldoon is the author of fifteen collections of poetry, including Moy Sand and Gravel, for which he received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Among his other awards are the 1994 T. S. Eliot Prize, the 2003 Griffin Prize, the 2015 Pigott Prize, and the 2017 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Born in County Armagh in 1951, he has lived since 1987 in the United States, where he is the Howard G. B. Clark Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University. In 2022 he was appointed Ireland Professor of Poetry.

Awards
Winner of Pulitzer Prize Poetry Category 2003. Short-listed for Griffin Poetry Prize - International 2003.



Book Information
ISBN 9780571216901
Author Paul Muldoon
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint Faber & Faber
Publisher Faber & Faber
Weight(grams) 140g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 130mm * 9mm