Poetry, prose and music from Paul Muldoon and Rogue Oliphant with Glen Hansard, Anna Burns and Padraig Regan.

Muldoon’s Picnic is a cabaret-style evening of poetry, prose, and music hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon. The show is named after a popular New York vaudeville act and an Irish American knockabout farce from the 1880s. The event is an omnium-gatherum of poetry, prose, and music, by turns witty, exuberant, and sophisticated. The show has been running for ten seasons at the Irish Arts Center in New York and has had three highly successful Irish tours.

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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 13th – 17th May 2024, including the Town Hall Theatre, Galway, Monday 13th May, 8pm. 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’. Each show on the tour has a bespoke mix of artists from the worlds of music and literature.

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.

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.

Produced by Poetry Ireland and supported by an Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon and Arts Council of Northern Ireland Touring Grant.