Rick Mullin has been selected as the Poet of the Parade for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade in West Orange.
Rick Mullin, a journalist and poet who has had a book published in Ireland, will be the Poet of the Parade this year in West Orange.
Originally from East Hanover, Mullin, 68, went to Drew University where he wrote poetry and was co-editor of the literary magazine. He stopped writing poetry for a time but took it up again 20 years ago.
He first travelled to Ireland in 1984 with his wife on their honeymoon. His next visit was in 2010 when he made three trips.
“Once was with family, another time was because I had a book published in Ireland, the third time was for work,” he said. “On these trips, I traveled all over.”
His career has been spent as a journalist covering the pharmaceutical industry for Chemical & Engineering News – a weekly magazine for chemists.
Mullin, who retired in 2023, is about ¼ Irish but he says he identifies as Irish because of his last name and because of his family situation.
“The Irish really ramped up when I married into an Irish family,” Mullin said. “My wife was the ninth of 11 children.”
His work has appeared in various journals and anthologies, including American Arts Quarterly, The New Criterion, The Dark Horse, Bad Lilies, and Rabbit Ears: TV Poems. His sonnet crown “Night” won the 2025 Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Crown Contest sponsored by the Poetry by the Sea conference.
He is the author of nine books of poetry, including “Soutine,” a biographical novel in terza rima about the painter Chaim Soutine. Terza rima is an Italian poetic form consisting of interlocking three-line stanzas with a chain-rhyme pattern usually ending with a couplet that rhymes with the middle line of the final tercet. Invented by Dante Alighieri for “The Divine Comedy,” it creates a forward-moving, narrative flow.
Mullin’s most recent collection, “Grotesque Singers,” was published in 2025 by Dos Madres Press.
He is also a painter with a recent series of landscapes painted in Grover Cleveland Park in Caldwell.
Mullin, who lives with his wife Maureen in Caldwell, has visited Ireland several times, traveling extensively with wife, Maureen and daughters Emily, Marguerite and Lydia. His poetry has been published in Ireland and he has recited poetry in Cork.
Ancestry
By Rick Mullin
My heritage is a joke of mathematics.
A quarter Irish, quarter German, half
a bloody Scotsman. On a weighted average?
German. But what is Germany to me?
A mountainscape that overpowers Scotland.
And what is Ireland? A mystery.
A mist that disappears into the gray
Atlantic combing ancient walls of stone
along the way. A hearth fire in the pub,
a song about the sickbed of Cúchulainn.
Whiskey in the jar and verdant rivers.
The persuasion of a rainbow swipe
converting Druid kings. A mystic saint.
An ancient world preserved in stoney igloos
and a steady flight aboard the coffin ships.
The alleys of the New York City gangs
remembered in a major motion picture.
The basement schools, severity of nuns,
and likelihood of marrying Italians.
The mist has risen, so to speak, and now
a grand diaspora settles in and marches,
green and orange, on the 17 th
of March, or maybe an adjacent weekend.
The fields of Athenry on Eagle Rock.
The celebration of an ancient myth
that permeates the new towns of America
to show up somewhere in our DNA.
About the Author
