Monday 13 – Friday 17 May, 2024
Galway, Armagh, Wexford, Dublin
Featuring Paul Muldoon with special guests Glen Hansard, Roddy Doyle, Liz Nugent, Anne Enright, Colm Mac Con Iomaire, Donal Ryan, Hugh Buckley, Sile Denvir, and many more.
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 returns for four dates nationwide 13 – 17 May 2024.
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’, (Times Literary Supplement).
Each show on the tour has a bespoke mix of artists from the worlds of music and literature. Guests such as Glen Hansard, Roddy Doyle, Liz Nugent, Anne Enright, Colm Mac Con Iomaire, Donal Ryan, Hugh Buckley, Sile Denvir and many more will join Muldoon for four different evenings of creative and collaborative energy.
“A music-and-literature extravaganza” – Time Out New York
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).
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.”
On Monday 13 May, kicking off the Irish tour from the Town Hall Theatre stage in Galway, Paul Muldoon and house band Rogue Oliphant will be joined by Booker Prize winning novelist Anna Burns, one of the leading Irish poets of their generation Padraig Regan, and Oscar winning musician Glen Hansard.
The Market Place Theatre in Armagh on Wednesday 15 May will be the venue for one of Ireland’s most beloved poets and recent TS Eliot Prize nominee Jane Clarke. Jane will be joined by the sounds of composer and musician Colm Mac Con Iomaire as well as internationally acclaimed author and Booker Prize winner Anne Enright.
On Thursday 16 May at Wexford Arts Centre, Tipperary-born author Donal Ryan, singer and harpist Síle Denvir and talented poet Nithy Kasa will be the guests.
The final night of the tour, Friday 17 May, brings Muldoon’s Picnic to the Pavilion Theatre in Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, where Muldoon will be joined 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.
Poetry Ireland has a growing reputation for producing dynamic literature events on a significant scale. This tour will introduce audiences to some of the finest writers and musicians performing today.
For further information on all events see www.poetryireland.ie
Produced by Poetry Ireland and supported by an Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon and Arts Council of Northern Ireland Touring Grant.
