Horse Latitudes (book)

"Horse Latitudes" is tenth collection of poetry from the Northern Irish poet Paul Muldoon. It was published by Faber and Faber on 19th October, 2006.

Its name stems from the areas north and south of the equator in which sailing ships tend to be becalmed, and where sailors traditionally (and possibly apocryphally) threw horses overboard, to lighten the ship and conserve food supplies (see Horse latitudes). The title was previously employed by Doors singer Jim Morrison for a song on the Strange Days album.

Like many of Muldoon's recent collections, "Horse Latitudes" contains a long poem – in this case a sonnet sequence ostensibly describing battle scenes through time and place. The collection also features several other characteristic features of Muldoon's work, such as fixed poetic forms and deft technique combined with a seemingly casual approach full of puns, slant-rhymes and wordplay.