Those who feel that poetry is anachronistic and irrelevant in our wonderfully modernised world are perhaps unlikely to be convinced of its power to speak to the very heart of the universal human condition by the headlines (okay, the Guardian’s Culture section) surrounding the current election for the Oxford Professorship of Poetry. I will admit that Melvyn Bragg – Radio 4’s resident know-it-all and current Big Voice in the candidacy debate – is perhaps not the most convincing ambassador for immediacy and cultural relevance. But if we look past Bragg’s well-meaning shit-stirring – first he supports Soyinka, now he’s rooting for Armitage? What next? – we can perhaps agree that the elections do represent a genuinely exciting cultural moment.
The Professorship is second only to the position of Poet Laureate in terms of prestige, and hence carries with it huge weight in determining what we really think of when we think of poetry. The tensions that arise when the position is contested – whether a candidate is too grand, too old, too male, too white – are not solely a result of our poetic expectations; they tell us more than we perhaps realise about who we want in a position of power over culture itself.
The position of Oxford Professor of Poetry has been in existence since 1708, when Henry Birkhead decided in classic fashion that he wanted to do something important with all his money. Since then, the chair has been held by some of literature and poetry’s absolute titans – Matthew Arnold (1857- 1867), A.C. Bradley (1901-1906), W.H. Auden (1956- 1961), Seamus Heaney (1989-1994), Christopher Ricks (2004-2009) – and yes, you would be correct to observe that all of these titans are drawn from the same pool; they’re all white men.
The Professorship is a visible marker of the extent to which one group still dominates our collective idea of poetry, an idea which has only recently shown signs of being eroded with the inclusion of women and people of colour in nominations for the post. The post is awarded once every five years, and is interestingly the only position in the University still elected by Convocation (the collective name for all graduates of the institution; it was originally the main governing body of the University itself). All candidates must be backed by at least 50 Oxford graduates, and the ‘single criterion for eligibility’ is, fairly intimidatingly, that ‘candidates be of sufficient distinction to be able to fulfil the duties of the post’.
The list of nominees this year proves the post is as distinguished and covetable as it has ever been, and indeed represents an exciting choice to be made about what we expect from the holder of the position. Wole Soyinka is the current frontrunner, with an impressive 149 nominations – and the questionable honour of being first backed and then spurned by none other than Melvyn Bragg, who ‘queried the age’ of the octogenarian poet (perhaps forgetting that the current Professor, Geoffrey Hill, seems to get on just fine at the age of 82). Soyinka, who became the first African recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, is a towering figure of poetry, drama and prose, whose astonishing literary output – combined with his commitment to justice and political activism – has won him the backing of many of the most prominent academics at the University.
Next in line is the lucky recipient of Bragg’s transferred affections, Simon Armitage – a man who perhaps defines more than any of his contemporaries the figure of the ‘working’ poet. Armitage combines a deep-rooted public popularity – he was the third best-selling living poet in the UK in 2013 – with a prolific teaching career, and has already spoken several times at Oxford in the recent past; he was recently invited to give the Richard Hillary Memorial Lecture, when his personable and accessible lecture won many round to his unassuming cause. Armitage writes in his statement that he would use the post “to discuss the situation of poetry and poets in the twenty-first century, to address the obstacles and opportunities brought about by changes in education, changes in reading habits, the internet, poetry’s decreasing ‘market share’, poetry’s relationship with the civilian world and the (alleged) long, lingering death of the book” – common ground, perhaps, with fellow nominee Ian Gregson, who wishes to address “how poetry has suffered, in recent decades, a catastrophic loss of cultural prestige and popularity”. Gregson’s cause seems admirable, but it seems perhaps a little backwards to campaign for one of the most elevated positions in the poetic landscape by asserting your very medium to be dead in the water.
Other nominees – Sean Haldane and A.E. Stallings among them – provide powerful and compelling statements stating their desire for the position. Though everyone loves a bit of competition, it almost feels like this singular position can never be enough wholly to speak for the truly exciting face of poetry as it operates today, for a poet’s work does not exist in a vacuum; like the crystallised statements these poets provide as evidence of their eligibility, individual poetic canons communicate with and cross-fertilise one another. Nonetheless, judging by the fervour surrounding the election, it seems the medium is very much alive in the public consciousness today.
