SOURCE: Muldoon, Paul, Earl G. Ingersoll, and Stan Sanvel Rubin. “The Invention of the I: A Conversation with Paul Muldoon.” Michigan Quarterly Review 37, no. 1 (winter 1998): 63-73.

In the following interview, originally conducted on April 4, 1996, Muldoon comments on his national identity and influences, his approach to writing, and the composition of “The Briefcase,” “Madoc,” and “Yarrow.”

The following conversation took place April 4, 1996, during the poet's visit to the State University of New York, College at Brockport, where he was a guest of the Brockport Writers Forum and Videotape Library. Speaking with him were Stan Sanvel Rubin, the Director of the Writers Forum, and Earl G. Ingersoll, Distinguished Teaching Professor of English.

Paul Muldoon was born and raised in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. In 1973 he received his B.A. from Queen's University, Belfast, where his tutor was Seamus Heaney, and his first book of poems, New Weather, was published. For...