Paul Muldoon's first collection of poetry was published when he was only twenty-one years old, an undergraduate student at Queen's University, Belfast. Well-received by reviewers at the time, it has since tended to be characterised as an example of over-excited and premature publication, with John Goodby describing it as “a youthfully promising if slightly rushed debut” and Tim Kendall going further still: “it is obvious in retrospect that Muldoon should have waited longer before publishing his first volume”. Nevertheless, for all its undeniable flaws, New Weather remains a remarkable document, rehearsing as it does so many of the tricks, poses, voices and evasions that would come to typify the style of this most distinctive and influential of poets. Considering that many of the poems were originally written while Muldoon was still a schoolboy, the technical...
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Citation: Phillips, Ivan. "New Weather". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 January 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3272, accessed 05 December 2025.]
