Photo Credit: Christine Harris
“To describe Paul Muldoon’s influence on contemporary poetry is like trying to assess the influence of The Beatles on post-war music: it’s to be seen and heard in the work of almost every British and Irish poet since the 1970’s.” — The Irish Post “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.” – Roger Rosenblatt, The New York Times Book Review Soul Selects Records is proud to announce the eagerly awaited new album from Paul Muldoon & Rogue Oliphant. A genre-defying collection produced by Tony Visconti that sees the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet venturing beyond the page into electrifying musical territory alongside an all-star cadre of legendary collaborators, Visible From Space arrives everywhere on Friday, September 12. Pre-orders/pre-saves are available now. The album is heralded by today’s premiere of the truly epic title track, “Visible From Space,” available at all streaming services now. “The love song to end all love songs,” says Paul Muldoon. “Also, a list song to end all list songs. A litany, then, of some of the phenomena — the Great Wall of China, the river Thames — that are indeed visible from space, the song always returns to ‘my love for you’ that is itself ‘so huge.’ The bridge refers to Prince’s 2007 Super Bowl halftime performance, though it took place not at the Houston Astrodome but the Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens. That’s for the fact checkers! “Like many of my lyrics, ‘Visible From Space’ takes one idea and runs with it. My favorite poet is John Donne (1572-1631), a specialist in the extended simile or metaphor. He’s my single greatest influence. In the case of this song, we have a list of phenomena that are so expansive that they may be discerned from a satellite orbiting the Earth. One of these phenomena is an island wrapped by Christo, an artist whom I happened to meet along the way. The conceit is that the speaker’s love is also so massive that it, too, would register from high above the Earth. It’s a song of profound joy and delight in being alive. The music is by Warren Zanes, whose power pop inclinations are very much to the fore. And the production, by Tony Visconti, plays up the expansiveness of the song’s subject matter.”
“I've never done any writing like songwriting with Paul Muldoon,” says Warren Zanes. “When I first look at a lyric sheet he passes along, I think, ‘You can't possibly fit all of those words into one song.’ But when I begin to put them to music, I need every one of those words. What I've realized is that when Paul gives you a lyric, he's written more than just words; he's given you something that has an implicit rhythm, through meter and rhyme, a mood and a feel, so it seems like the song's writing itself. But that's Paul, his presence…One thing I adore about ‘Visible From Space’ is the way the speaker's grand proclamations of love are balanced with uncertainty. There's a bombast mixed with insecurity.”
LISTEN TO “VISIBLE FROM SPACE” WATCH “VISIBLE FROM SPACE” LYRIC VIDEO
PRE-ORDER/PRE-SAVE VISIBLE FROM SPACE
Hailed by The Times Literary Supplement as “the most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War,” Paul Muldoon has spent decades redefining the possibilities of lyric and language. Now, with Visible From Space, the visionary Irish poet brings his layered lyricism to life in bold, unexpected ways, bridging poetry with performance, verse with the visceral power of rock ‘n’ roll. Produced by the legendary Tony Visconti (David Bowie, T. Rex, Thin Lizzy) and engineered by 4x GRAMMY® Award winner Kevin Killen (U2, Peter Gabriel, Elvis Costello), the album once again unites Muldoon with a stellar collective of truly singular musicians including singer-songwriter/guitarist Chris Harford, singer-songwriter/guitarist/author Warren Zanes (The Del Fuegos), bassist Cáit O’Riordan (The Pogues), multi-instrumentalist and composer David Mansfield (Bob Dylan, T Bone Burnett), and drummer/percussionist Ray Kubian (Dean Ween Group, Electric Six, Chris Forsyth), as well as guest appearances from renowned saxophonist Donny McCaslin. A brilliantly vivid tapestry of poetic storytelling and genre-crossing arrangements, Visible From Space – which marks the fourth full-length release from Rogue Oliphant following 2022’s Highlights of the Low Life. At the forefront is the guiding hand of Paul Muldoon, his words weaving through such extraordinary tracks as the surrealistic love song, “Rainstorm,” and the hard-rocking “The Help Wants To Go Home” with captivating directness and enigmatic power, imbued with the rich cultural heritage of Irish literature yet unmistakably modern in both language and perspective. At once cinematic, literate, and deeply human, Visible From Space is the most ingeniously allusive and sonically inspired work from Paul Muldoon & Rogue Oliphant – a transcendent fusion of words and music, brought to life by some of rock’s most adventurous minds. Rogue Oliphant will celebrate the release of Visible From Space at New York’s Joe’s Pub on September 3.
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ABOUT PAUL MULDOON: Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet and professor of poetry, as well as an editor, critic, playwright, lyricist, and translator. Muldoon is the author of fifteen full-length collections of poetry, including 2002’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Moy Sand and Gravel, along with innumerable smaller collections, works of criticism, opera libretti, books for children, song lyrics, and radio and television drama. His poetry has been translated into twenty languages. Born in 1951 in Portadown, Co. Armagh, Northern Ireland, to Patrick Muldoon, a farm laborer and market gardener, and Brigid Regan, a schoolteacher, Paul Muldoon was brought up near a village called The Moy on the border of counties Armagh and Tyrone. He is the oldest of three children. After studying at Queen’s University, Belfast, he published his first book, New Weather, in 1973, at the age of 21. From 1973 he worked as a producer for the BBC in Belfast until, in the mid-1980’s, he gave up his job to become a freelance writer and moved to the United States with his second wife, the American novelist Jean Hanff Korelitz. He now lives in New York City and Sharon Springs, NY. He is the father of two children. Muldoon served as Professor of Poetry at Oxford University from 1999 to 2004 and as poetry editor of The New Yorker from 2007 to 2017. He has taught at Princeton University since 1987 and currently occupies the Howard G.B. Clark ’21 chair in the Humanities. He was the Founding Chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The recipient of honorary doctorates from ten universities, among Muldoon’s many honors and accolades are the 1972 Eric Gregory Award, the 1980 Sir Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award, the 1994 T. S. Eliot Prize, the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Excellence in Poetry, the 2004 American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the 2004 Shakespeare Prize, the 2006 European Prize for Poetry, the 2015 Pigott Poetry Prize, the 2017 Spirit of Ireland Award from the Irish Arts Center (NYC), the 2017 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, the 2018 Seamus Heaney Award for Arts & Letters, the 2020 Michael Marks Award, and the 2024 Premio di Poesia Sinestetica. # # # PAUL MULDOON & ROGUE OLIPHANT VISIBLE FROM SPACE (Soul Selects Records) Release Date: Friday, September 12, 2025 | 
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