Muldoon's Picnic (November 2023)

Paul Muldoon was born in County Armagh in 1951 and now lives in New York. A former radio and television producer for the BBC in Belfast, he has taught at Princeton University for more than thirty years. He is the author of thirteen collections of poetry, including Moy Sand and Gravel (2002)—for which he won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize—and Frolic and Detour (2019), as well as Selected Poems 1968-2014 (2016). Roger Rosenblatt, writing recently in the New York Times Book Review, described Paul Muldoon as “one of the great poets of the past hundred years, who can be everything in his poems—word-playful, lyrical, hilarious, melancholy. And angry. Only Yeats before him could write with such measured fury.” 

Photo credit: Gary Doak

Country singer Laura Cantrell has balanced different aspects of her music life over the course of a 20-plus year career, whether as a recording artist, radio host, writer, or working parent of a high-school aged musician. Well-known as a recording artist with a devoted following in the US and UK, Cantrell has expressed her passion for country music through various platforms, whether as the host of "Dark Horse Radio," a program devoted to George Harrison on SiriusXM's The Beatles Channel, or as a performer curating "States of Country," her monthly live series exploring regional diversity in country music.

Louise Kennedy grew up near Belfast. Her short story collection, The End of the World is a Cul de Sac (2021) won the John McGahern Prize. Her debut novel, Trespasses (2022), was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize and won Novel of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards, Book of the Year (Debut) at the British Book Awards, and the McKitterick Prize. She lives in Sligo, Ireland.

Elaine Equi’s most recent book is The Intangibles from Coffee House Press. Her other books include Voice-Over, which won the San Francisco State Poetry Award; Ripple Effect: New & Selected Poems, which was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Award and on the short list for The Griffin Poetry Prize; and Sentences and Rain. Widely published and anthologized, her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Brooklyn Rail, Court Green, The Nation, The New Yorker, Poetry, and in many editions of the Best American Poetry. She is also the guest editor of Best American Poetry 2023.

Singer-songwriter, record producer, independent label owner, and painter Chris Harford makes Hopewell, New Jersey his home. A founding member of Rogue Oliphant, Harford has been collaborating with Paul Muldoon for over a decade now.

Ray Kubian, a long-time collaborator with legendary poet Paul Muldoon, has lent his drumming, vocal, and songwriting talents to bands led by Richard Lloyd (Television), indie rock phenom Chris Forsyth, the Irish classic rock band Horslips, and Detroit-based band Electric Six, among others. He is co-founder of Moon Clouds Music, a teaching and production studio in the greater New York area.

David is an award-winning film and television composer. His first film score was for the controversial epic Heaven's Gate. It led to a four-film collaboration with director Michael Cimino, and a Golden Globe nomination for Year Of The Dragon. Other long-standing relationships include Mexican auteur Arturo Ripstein and Maggie Greenwald (Ballad of Little Jo, Songcatcher). His score for Ripstein's Deep Crimson won Best Musical Score at both the Venice and Havana Film Festivals. David’s score for the A&E mini-series Broken Trail (directed by Walter Hill) was nominated for an Emmy. His most recent score is for the Showtime limited series George & Tammy, starring Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain.

David also has composed for scripted podcasts, including Audible’s The Big Lie, starring Jon Hamm and created by John Mankiewicz. 

David is a world-renowned musician, coming to national attention at age 19 as part of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue. He subsequently formed The Alpha Band with fellow Dylan alumni T Bone Burnett and Steven Soles. He was featured in the Martin Scorsese film Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, and was a part of Dylan’s 1978 world tour which resulted in two albums, Live At Budokan and Street Legal. 

In the 1980s David was one of the founding members of Bruce Hornsby and The Range, receiving an RIAA platinum album and a Grammy for The Way It Is. His credits read like a veritable who’s who of popular music, from the late Johnny Cash to Sting to Bobby McFerrin. 

David is also a record producer. Current projects include albums by Teddy Thompson, Jenni Muldaur, and Laura Cantrell. He is currently producing a new album by Kinky Friedman.

Simón Willson is a Chilean born, New York City based bassist, composer and improviser. As an eclectic and in-demand sideman, he has toured with a host of different musicians in Europe, the US, Canada, and South America. His wide-ranging interest in different realms of jazz, popular, and improvised music has led him to work regularly with a diverse pool of established artists such as Dave Douglas, Ethan Iverson, Jason Palmer, Jonathan Kreisberg, Pablo Held, Frank Carlberg, Roxana Amed, the Mark Morris Dance Group, and many others. In addition to his sideman work, he co-leads the bands Family Plan and Earprint. The latter won the “best debut album” category of the NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll in 2016. In 2023 Orlando Furioso, Vicente Atria’s septet in which Willson plays bass, won the Deutscher Jazz Preis in the “Best International New Artist” category. He can be heard on over thirty records for labels such as Sony Music, Tzadik, Greenleaf, Steeplechase, Newvelle, Endectomorph, and on a number of self-releases. His bandleading debut album “Good Company” will be released October 13, 2023 on Fresh Sound Records.

Warren Zanes is a New York Times bestselling author, a Grammy-nominated documentary producer, and a professor currently teaching at New York University. As a teenager, Warren Zanes joined The Del Fuegos, making three records for Slash/Warner Bros. Later, after earning his PhD in visual and cultural studies from The University of Rochester, Zanes released Memory Girls, the first of four solo recordings made for Dualtone/Nashville. In the non-profit sector, Warren was the vice president of education and public programs at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and, for ten years, an executive director of The Rock and Roll Forever Foundation. His books include Dusty in Memphis (the first volume in the celebrated 33 1/3 series); Petty: The Biography; Revolutions in Sound: Warner Bros. Records; and Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. With Garth Brooks, Zanes has worked on all six books in the artist’s anthology series. Among his work in film, Zanes was a consulting producer on the Oscar-winning Twenty Feet from Stardom, a producer on the Grammy-nominated PBS Soundbreaking series, conducted interviews for Martin Scorsese’s George Harrison: Living in the Material World, and served as writer for The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash. He is an active member of both poet Paul Muldoon’s Rogue Oliphant and a family that includes his sons, Lucian and Piero.