The Stellfox Selection Committee has announced that Paul Muldoon, a Pullitzer Prize-winning Irish poet and professor at Princeton University, will receive the 2014 Stellfox award after the passing of the previously assigned winner, Noble Prize-winner Seamus Heaney.

The committee selected Irish poet Seamus Heaney last semester to be the recipient of the annual award. The visit would have been his third time coming to campus since 1993 and his first visit since earning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.

Heaney passed away on August 30 in Dublin, Ireland at the age of 74 before he could make the visit to Dickinson.

With the Stellfox residency and award ceremony scheduled for April 2014, the Stellfox Award Committee was faced with the difficult task of choosing an alternate recipient for the award.

“The committee was concerned with the politics of inviting a “second choice’ recipient for the award,” explained Emily Smith ’16, one of the students on the committee. “Many felt that the best way to move forward was to completely turn in the opposite direction, inviting someone to receive the award who is the polar opposite of Heaney.”

According to members on the committee, the group initially considered inviting a playwright or short fiction writer. They also planned for the Stellfox ceremony to proceed without mention of Heaney, until the committee’s chairwoman Professor Carol Ann Johnston suggested Muldoon, a poet, as a suitable recipient.

“We had no desire to make Stellfox morbid and prolong mourning [Heaney]. But we also had a desire to honor the poet and his works,” said Johnston, explaining why the group chose to select another poet and friend of Heaney.

The committee later voted again on the matter and, according to Johnston, the seven members of the group elected unanimously to invite the Irish poet’s longtime friend and mentee Muldoon to take Heaney’s place as the 2014 Stellfox Award recipient.

“[Muldoon] is a lovely teacher and a gifted poet, just like Heaney. I am really happy how this all turned out and I look forward to having him come to campus,” said Johnston.

Muldoon was born in County Armagh, Northern Ireland and studied English at Queen’s University Belfast, where he met and befriended Heaney. After working for 13 years as an arts producer for the BBC, he took his first teaching position as professor of creative writing at the University of East Anglia. He immigrated to the United States in 1987, where he has worked as the Howard B. G. Clark ’21 Professor of English at Princeton University and as the poetry editor for The New Yorker.

He is considered, alongside Heaney, as one of the preeminent poets of the 20th century.

Muldoon will complete a residency at Dickinson between April 1 and 3. During the residency the poet will receive the Stellfox award, attend workshops with students, sit in on classes and give a presentation that will include a memorial of Heaney.

“I am really excited for Muldoon’s residency,” said Smith. “His visit will help bring closure for the loss this campus is feeling about Heaney. In Muldoon, we found the perfect balance between moving forward with the Stellfox residency and honoring the legacy of Heaney.”

Article includes research and material from Matthew Korb ’14.