By Dirk Langeveld

FAIRFIELD – Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield (IGHMF) is welcoming a Pulitzer Prize winning poet for a presentation next month, part of its ongoing efforts to reestablish a museum on the 19th century famine in Connecticut.

Paul Muldoon will be featured in the event “Ireland in Poetry and Song” at 8 p.m. on Friday, November 7th, at Sacred Heart Community Theater. All proceeds will support IGHMF.

The fundraiser is being presented in partnership with the Sacred Heart University Center for Irish Studies. Tickets are $54, and more information can be found here.

Muldoon, an Irish-born poet, is the author of 15 collections of poetry as well as numerous other works, ranging from song lyrics to TV and radio dramas. He served as a poetry professor at Princeton University and Oxford University, was the founding chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts, and was the poetry editor at The New Yorker from 2007 to 2017.

In 2003, Muldoon received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection Moy Sand and Gravel. The collection includes reflections from both Muldoon’s upbringing in County Armagh in Ireland and his later life in the United States. Muldoon has also been the recipient of several other honors, including being named a Saoi of Aosdána, Ireland’s highest artistic honor, in 2022.

The presentation came together after a member of IGHMF’s steering committee and board attended an event in 2024 promoting Muldoon’s most recent poetry collection. Afterwards, they approached Muldoon to ask if he would be willing to help the organization.

“Paul Muldoon stated he has heard about the fate of this museum and graciously said, unequivocally, ‘Yes!” said Maura Kallaway, IGHMF’s creative director.

Another steering committee member was able to secure the participation of Grammy Award nominated musician John Doyle at the November 7th event. A former member of the group Solas, Doyle has since released two solo albums of folk and traditional Irish music. Jazz musician Chris Coogan will perform at a pre-party event.

Proceeds will support the reopening of a museum on the Great Hunger, which ravaged Ireland between 1845 and 1852. The famine caused approximately one million deaths, and led about two million people to leave the Emerald Isle.

Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum was originally established by Quinnipiac University president John Lahey, housing a collection he had amassed of artwork related to the famine. The off-campus museum occupied a former bank building on Hamden’s main street.

The museum closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2021 the university’s board of directors opted not to reopen it. The decision was driven by concerns over the museum’s lack of visitors and its inability to generate enough revenue to cover its operating expenses.

Following this decision, leaders of the Gaelic-American Club of Fairfield founded IGHMF. The group has been partnering with Quinnipiac to become caretakers of the museum collection, and is responsible for raising funds, hiring staff, and establishing a new museum space in Fairfield.

The group plans to establish the new museum downtown Fairfield’s newly designated Arts and Cultural District. IGHMF is hoping to open the museum in the fall of 2027, and in the interim will be holding regular exhibitions and programming to display artwork from the collection. 

Upcoming displays include the presentations The Famine Immigrants of Connecticut at the Stratford Library on November 16th and Irish Immigrant Experience on Staten Island at the Darien Library on April 11th, 2026. The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion in Norwalk will have an exhibition of artwork between March and May 2026.

Ireland in Poetry and Song

Friday, November 7
8:00 pm
Sacred Heart Community Theater
1420 Post Road
Fairfield

Expanded coverage of Fairfield County cultural events is made possible with support from the Fairfield University Quick Center for the Arts.