‘Artmaking is a drug’ – interview with poet Paul Muldoon

A fellow festival-goer at the recent Calabash literary festival in Treasure Beach, Jamaica, enjoyed chatting to a gentle Irish poet called Paul. He told her he ‘dabbled’ in poetry, and she was seconds from asking if he was planning on reading any of his work at the open-mike session.

When Paul Muldoon, the poet in question, came to give his reading, it was soon quite clear that he is, in fact, a famous poet. He opened with ‘Comeback’, a poem about a washed-up rock band for ever on the brink of their next great hit: ‘We’d pay in cash/For a kilo of Khartoum/And come back to trash/Another hotel room/And make a comeback baby/A comeback don’t you see?/It’s time to make a comeback baby/Come back baby to me.’ One part Princeton professor, two parts ageing rocker, and with a strange and you might say characteristic mix of the deadpan and the tender, Muldoon had the audience eating out of his hand.