Songwriting faculty member Warren Zanes will be performing as part of Muldoon's Picnic at New York City's Irish Arts Center on Nov. 14th. As member of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Princeton professor Paul Muldoon's Rogue Oliphant, Zanes has co-written more than a dozen songs with Muldoon and performed internationally with the group, which includes members of The Pogues and Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue. Other guests at Muldoon's Picnic events this year include U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, British musician and songwriter Richard Thompson, and novelist Meg Wolitzer. The Muldoon's Picnic series will continue with three more events in the spring.
Zanes recently published a chapter in the new Cornell University Press volume Ink in the Grooves, edited by Florence Dore. His essay, "English as a Second Language," looks at issues of language disruption in early rock and roll. Other contributors include Greil Marcus, Bob Dylan, Dave Grohl, Michael Chabon, and others. The book is an outgrowth of a conference held at The National Humanities Center, at which Zanes presented with several of the other contributors.