Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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The current elections to the Oxford Chair of Poetry has lately been preoccupying the academic world. Founded in 1708 and first held by what John Walsh of The Independent describes as "popular Oxford figures, local wits and literary critics", at first it was a religious post and the 16 lectures given by the holder of the chair were given in Latin, Victorian poet Matthew Arnold being the first holder of the chair to lecture in English. In spite of its modest annual salary of 4,695 sterling pounds, this is a highly distinguished and sought after university post, open not only to poets, but also to academics. At the moment, it seems that the final race will be between poet and literary critic, Peter Porter and Christopher Ricks.

The chair was successively held by poets including: W H Auden, Robert Graves, Edmund Blunden, Roy Fuller, John Wain and, recently, Seamus Heaney. This bevy of poets gives the supporters of Peter Porter sufficient reason to declare that poets should occupy the chair.

The other contender for the chair is Christopher Ricks, doyen of modern literary critics who has published works, popular on both sides of the Atlantic, on Milton, Keats, Tennyson and T S Eliot. Ricks is a top critic, lecturer and scholar who, in the words of Walsh, "has never, as far as anyone knows, written a line of poetry, while Porter, a favourite poet on the literary circuit, is no academic and never went to university". The question is "who is the more appropriate figure to sit on Oxford's Parnassian throne?"

Nomination to the post follows certain procedures. A nominee must be given the voice of at least 12 Oxford graduates who each supply an essay underlining the virtues of their candidate. In Ricks' case, it was, naturally, the heads of nine Oxford colleges and leading literary academics who nominated him. Their support for Ricks is based on his "enormous distinction" as a teacher, his "uniquely subtle critical imagination" and "profound scholarship".

Porter's fans, according to Walsh, "are more 'ad hominem'", emphasising their man's good-egg qualities, and not just his poetry. Behind Porter stand a number of literary figures, poets and novelists, including Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. John Fuller, a poet in support of his fellow poet Porter, says: "The whole idea of the chair of poetry is that it is given to someone free from the usual musical chairs of academia."

The struggle, in short, is between critical vigour and academia, on the one hand, and poetic insight and the university-of-life, on the other. Opinions differ as to which should win out. Craig Raine, a lecturer at Oxford and a poet, thinks that, "It would be very nice to have a poet in the job, but if you can't find a poet then maybe you should have a novelist like Ian McEwan. Somebody creative." Raine then goes on to say: "This is not an anti- Ricks position. What survives in the history of criticism is the work of critic- practitioners -- people like Johnson, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Arnold, T S Eliot."

John Sutherland, professor of English at University College, London thinks that if it comes to lecturing then Ricks should get the post. "He is without doubt," Sutherland says, "the best lecturer on his subject in the world. Also, he was an Oxford man -- he edited the classic edition of Tennyson there and may be thinking of returning to Oxford to retire."

But underneath these polite and seemingly fair, unprejudiced statements, there is, according to novelist and biographer D J Taylor, "something shocking about the hostility surrounding the voting". I think I got my first taste of how venomous the literary world can be when I read the following words of Geoffrey Wheatcroft published in The Spectator : "One looks forward with considerable relish to voting against Stephen Spender."

At the end of his story Walsh writes that there are "faint whiffs of hooliganism, favouritism and gerrymandering behind the dignity of the Oxford Poetry Chair!"