Paul Muldoon, elected this week as Oxford Professor of Poetry, is one of the youngest ever to hold this chair, which is decided by ballot by Oxford graduates writes Eileen Battersby. It is held for five years and duties include delivering five major annual lectures.

Born in Co Armagh in 1951, Muldoon has won many prestigious literary prizes, including the T.S. Eliot Memorial Prize and the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry in 1997 for his critically acclaimed New Selected Poems - 1968 -1994. This collection, chosen by the poet, offers a valuable insight into his highly cerebral approach to his art. Muldoon's poetic voice is witty and personal, at times approaching the idiosyncratic. His use of language is inventive, frequently drawing on daily routine and the topical.

Muldoon is a witty, assured performer, capable of being challenging and subversive. His lectures are bound to engage and in this he will sustain a precedent established by Seamus Heaney, who held the position before Muldoon's immediate forerunner, James Fenton.