Geoffrey Hill

A few months back, the race for the revered position as Professor of Poetry at Oxford University turned into an ugly brawl, whereby a poet (Derek Walcott) known in America for some prominent instances of sexual harassment ran against another poet (Ruth Padel) who, after tipping off the press to his past, was called every name in the book. She won, but became the victim of an astonishing smear campaign by British journalists and academics, and was drummed out in short order. (See the earlier MobyLives report).

Now there are some new candidates to replace her and, well, the headline for Cahal Milmo‘s report for The Independent says it all: “Writer famed for brutality of his verse nominated for prestigious professorship.”

As the story continues, “The Endgame of one of the most acrimonious literary spats in recent times began yesterday when one of the nation’s most divisive poets — revered for his ‘brooding verse’ and chastised for being “inaccessible” — was announced as a candidate for Oxford University’s next professor of poetry.”

The candidate is question is Geoffrey Hill, “widely considered to be one of Britain’s finest living writers and critics,” and “regarded as a powerful and tenebrous voice, unafraid of immersing himself in a world of violence and brutality across subjects from the mythology of his native Malvern Hills to the Holocaust. But he is not without his detractors, who have criticised him as ‘difficult’ and representative of an archaic nationalism.”

Oxford English department deputy chair Seamus Perry says this time out “We are hoping for a debate about poetry rather than other things this time, and I think the fact we have a poet of Geoffrey Hill’s distinction is proof that the position itself has emerged unscathed. His is a very strong candidacy.”

Voting takes place in June.

Meanwhile, observes Milmo, “The row fitted into a long history of distinguished fallings out between poets. Ben Jonson reputedly took aim at Shakespeare, suggesting that contrary to the great scribe’s reputation for never having to erase a line of verse, he wished ‘he had blotted a thousand’. Thankfully, few have felt so impassioned as the French poet Paul Verlaine, who shot his lover Arthur Rimbaud with a revolver.”