Paula Claire

The only woman in contention for the Oxford Professor of Poetry position — vacant ever since Ruth Padel was driven out for pointing out to the press that her competitor Derek Walcott had numerous, settled-out-of-court sexual harassment charges against him — has withdrawn from the race after charging Oxford with ginning the game in favor of a man, Geoffrey Hill.

As a Guardian story reports, Paula Claire “has withdrawn in protest over what she is describing as “serious flaws” in the election process that she believes have pushed best-known candidate Geoffrey Hill ahead of all other contenders.”

She is protesting over the fact that she was described as a “performer and artist” in Oxford’s announcement of the 11 candidates for the post, omitting the fact that she is a poet. The “last straw”, she said, was a flysheet published last week in Oxford’s Gazette, the official journal of the university. supporting Hill. It called Hill, the frontrunner for the election, “quite simply a giant” and “the finest living poet in English today”.

Describing the flysheet as “repugnant” and “deliberately written to devalue all other bona fide candidates”, she said today that the university was supporting Hill for the post “and the rest of us are ignored as not worthy to be in the set-up”. “I’m very happy to say that he is one of the finest poets in English today — I agree with that. But not the finest,” she said. “That is grossly over the top. They shouldn’t allow it ahead of the election — an election is supposed to be a fair system and until the voters come in everybody’s equal.”

“I haven’t withdrawn in a pique — I’ve withdrawn for women,” Claire tells the paper. “The post was founded in 1708. They haven’t had a woman since then and I think they’re still determined to put a man in.”

“Her resignation letter demanded that an independent committee unconnected with the university’s faculty of English be set up to run the election,” says the Guardian, in what the paper terms “a genuinely reformed and modern way: efficiently, transparently and democratically, backed up by advice from internet experts and given an independent complaints procedure.”