Pulitzer-winning NI poet Paul Muldoon compares Taylor Swift to namesake Jonathan in glowing review of ‘The Tortured Poets Department’

Taylor Swift on stage

Paul Muldoon has praised Taylor Swift's new album

thumbnail: Taylor Swift on stage
thumbnail: Paul Muldoon has praised Taylor Swift's new album
Jessica Rice

Pulitzer prize-winning Irish poet Paul Muldoon has praised Taylor Swift’s new album, saying she has it in her to write “something ­really substantial” poetically.

Muldoon (72) compared the 34-year-old superstar to “her namesake” – the Irish writer and poet Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels.

“Love won and lost is no less a subject for Taylor Swift than for Jonathan, Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin,” he said in a piece published in The Daily Telegraph.

Muldoon praised Swift’s light-hearted use of wit in The Tortured Poets Department, which discusses her relationship with her most recent exes, the actor Joe Alwyn and Matty Healy, lead vocalist for indie art-pop band The 1975.

“The wit on display in Jonathan Swift may also be glimpsed in Taylor Swift when she asserts in a couplet included in her new ­album’s ancillary material: ‘A smirk creeps onto this poet’s face. Because it’s the worst men that I write best’,” he wrote.

Muldoon admitted he related to certain themes Swift touched throughout the album.

“As a poet who’s been tortured by some of the same things as Taylor – including whether Matty Healy of The 1975 is really worth the trouble – I know where she’s coming from,” he said.

However, Muldoon did have some criticisms for Swift, particularly in the title track, The Tortured Poets Department, where Swift sings: “You left your typewriter at my apartment. Straight from the tortured poets department.”

Muldoon felt she could have made better rhyming choices in the track.

“I fear this rhyme is less than inspired and she struggles with the phrasing of the second line,” he said.

Despite this, Muldoon seemed to enjoy the album, stating that his favourite line from The ­Tortured Poets Department is: “I laughed in your face and said ‘You’re not ­Dylan Thomas, I’m not ­Patti Smith. This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel, we’re modern idiots’.”

Muldoon ending his review by praising both Taylor and ­Jonathan’s poetry.

“As Jonathan Swift knew, poetry is a broad church and there’s plenty of room in it for a solid songwriter like Taylor Swift,” he said.

“She may well have it in her to write something really substantial.”

Muldoon is currently the ninth Ireland Professor of Poetry, an academic chair established in 1998 to commemorate Nobel Prize winner, Seamus Heaney.