AFTER 10 sold-out seasons at the Irish Arts Center in New York and a successful Irish tour in 2017, Muldoon’s Picnic returns to Ireland for six dates, including a show at the MAC in Belfast, later this summer.
An omnium-gatherum of poetry, prose and music, Muldoon's Picnic is hosted by Co Armagh Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon.
The title refers to a popular 19th-century New York vaudeville show, which inspired the New York-based Muldoon to begin hosting these evenings of literature and music in 2014.
Described by Time Out New York as “a music-and-literature extravaganza,” each show on the tour has a bespoke mix of artists from the worlds of music and literature. Guests including Michael Longley, Lisa O’Neill, Zadie Smith, and Horslips will join Muldoon for six different evenings of creative and collaborative energy.
Paul Muldoon himself 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.”
The house band for the show is Rogue Oliphant, a collective of musicians and composers including Chris Harford (Three Colors, Band of Changes), Cait O’Riordan (The Pogues), David Mansfield (Bob Dylan, The Alpha Band) and Ray Kubian (Electric Six, Chris Forsyth).
The final night of the tour, which also includes performances in Sligo, Dublin, Cork, Ennis and Carrick-on-Shannon, which is produced by Poetry Ireland and supported by the Republic's Arts Council and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, takes place in The MAC on Sunday August 11.
On the bill are Clannad's Moya Brennan, virtuoso harpist Cormac de Barra, novelist and screenwriter John Banville and west Cork poet Leanne O’Sullivan. Tickets go on sale on Monday June 3. More at poetryireland.ie/news/muldoons-picnic-irish-tour-2019
