Distinguished Visiting Professors

Our Visiting Professors

We are proud to currently have two Visiting Professors in the Department – Paul Muldoon and Mary Talbot. Both are celebrated within their respective fields, and each represents an important area of English Literature & Creative Writing at Lancaster.

Our visiting professors Paul Muldoon and Mary Talbot play a very active role within the Department. As a student, you can expect to attend lectures that they will give as well as to be invited to join with them for specialist workshops and public talks. You will also be invited to apply for a one-to-one tutorial with Paul or Mary, to discuss your own work; we can’t promise always to accommodate everyone but, currently, very few requests are declined.

Professor Paul Muldoon

Distinguished Professor of Poetry

Professor Paul Muldoon is an internationally renowned poet. He has won both the Pulitzer Prize and T. S. Eliot Prize for his work. The Guardian named him ‘the most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War’.

Professor Muldoon has published over thirty collections of poetry, including Knowing My Place (1971), Madoc: A Mystery (1990), Moy Sand and Gravel (2002), Maggot (2010) and One Thousand Things Worth Knowing (2015). His poetry has been translated into over 20 languages and published worldwide. He has also published works of criticism, libretti, books for children, song lyrics and radio and television drama.

Professor Muldoon’s work can be described as paradoxical, things not always being what they seem. He is a traditionalist but also an innovator, re-making poetic forms and devices, working alongside songwriters and musicians. He takes traditional themes and ideas and blends them with current politics and culture, allowing us to view the world anew. His work is noted for its playful use of language, its lyricism, allusion and wit.

His past appointments have included Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford (1999-2004). He is currently a Howard G. B. Clark '21 Professor at Princeton University.

Professor Muldoon is also Poetry Editor of The New Yorker, a former president of the UK Poetry Society, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Professor Paul Muldoon with PJ Harvey at the 2017 Lancaster Words Festival

Professor Mary Talbot

Mary Talbot is an internationally acclaimed graphic novelist. Her first, Dotter of her Father's Eyes (with Bryan Talbot), won the 2012 Costa Biography Award., and is about James Joyce’s daughter Luce. She is now working on another graphic biography: Armed with Madness: The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington (also with Bryan Talbot). Professor Talbot is one of the three founder patrons of The Lakes International Comic Art Festival at Kendal.