<<
(Just read Robin's email as I was about to send this - so forgive the
overlap. By the way Robin, James Fenton was elected and did do his stint as
Professor of Poetry and published a book of the lectures).
>>

Ooops!!!  Right, Jamie -- should have remembered this, as Fenton's position 
as ex-professor figured in his own commentary at the time.  It was whoever 
stood against Peter Levi that I think I had in mind.  Oh, lord, wasn't it 
Peter Porter?  Or did Porter graciously refuse to stand against Levi and was 
beaten by Fenton?  *So confusing.  <g>

Actually, given that I said Fenton's not being elected was "a disgrace", it 
was really quite a lulu of a mistake on my part!!

Robin




  I sent this and some glitch occurred, probably of my own making - so I'm
trying again. Apologies if it appears twice.

Jeff,
Why not assume Anne Stevenson was merely uninformed about the fact it
was an
election when she herself says in the Guardian article:
"I have always (probably naively) assumed that the professorship of poetry
at Oxford was an honour that a poet was asked to accept..."
rather than jumping to the conclusion that "it is probably rigged" on the
basis of no evidence or knowledge whatsoever?
   You said you thought this "Partly because Stevenson seemed to let
something slip..." so perhaps you had other evidence as well?

You can find the rules at
       http://www.admin.ox.uk/councilsec/poetry/vacancy.shtml
A candidate must be nominated by at least 12 members of convocation, and
then whatever candidates there are are subject to a vote open to all
graduate members of the university (if I've understood the procedure).
The Guardian article itself explains that last year's
 "scandal prompted Oxford University to change the voting system for the
election, which had previously only allowed Oxford graduates to vote in
person at the university on a single day. Now, graduates will be able to
vote online, as well as to cast their vote in person over a period of time."
   So there's an attempt to make the vote "count" more significantly by
widening the franchise. (I've no idea whether the effect will improve the
choices.)

There has never, at least to my knowledge, been any question of a lack of
"transparency" as to the vote, let alone your allegation of vote-rigging.
Whatever untransparent things occurred in the lead-up to the last election
had nothing to do with the voting process.

Obviously the decision as to which poets are nominated is going to be
steered by anyone or any group, probably from the English Faculty, who feels
strongly enough about the election of a particular candidate. This might not
be ideal but I can't really see how it could be more "transparent - each 
person
who chooses to must make a nomination in their own name.
   Before it all came crashing down, I'd have thought all 3 candidates last
year were interesting choices: Walcott, Padel and Mehrotra.
There has never been a black poet or a woman poet or an Indian poet
appointed, which makes it especially disappointing it ended in such a
fiasco.
This fact alone might make one question the lack of imagination in the
nomination process, question even the tastes of the majority of the voters,
but to make an allegation of dishonesty isn't merely "cynical". it's also
defamatory.


Jamie

On Sun, 21 Feb 2010 06:45:59 -0500, Robin Hamilton
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Jeff wrote:
>
><<
>Yes, I am a bit cynical about the electoral transparency of the elections
>for the Oxford poetry professorship. Partly because Stevenson seemed
>to let something slip when she said it was an honour “that a poet was
>asked to accept”. This sounds as if she had been privy at some point in
>the past to the behind-the-scenes machinations that might go on. She
>must be in a position to know what she meant.
>>>
>
>I think the best that can be said about what you say above there, Jeff, is
>that it's a load of total bollox.
>
>Leaving aside whether Anne Stevenson's remark was correctly quoted or not,
>I'm inclined to think that she was simply indicating, what is a bit of a
>cliche, that given who has been there before, being elected, or even
>nominated to the Oxford chair, is an honour.  Trite maybe but true.
>
>More important is the "there's a fix in already" idea.
>
>There are problems with the Oxford elections, and one is that the small 
>size
>of the electorate has led to greater or lesser degrees dirty electorial
>politics, hard canvassing, friends tapping friends on the shoulder.  This
>can lead to Bad Things Happening.  It's pretty much a disgrace that James
>Fenton never managed to get elected, but then if he had, would he have
>written anything he hasn't or wouldn't have published elsewhere?  But it
>also means that the sort of pre-determined electorial fix you're implying
>above simply isn't possible.  Bad things yes, attempts to convince,
>overpersuade, play the old-boys' club card, sure.  But not that particular
>*kind of fix.
>
>But the *real problem with your uninformed and glib remarks above is that
>they gloss blythely over what happened at the previous election -- you
>remember, the one where Derek Walcott withdrew?  That one *wasn't par
for
>the course, since "the behind-the-scenes machinations" were coming from
the
>outside, in the shape of the latest example of a series of attacks on
>Walcott which began shortly after he won the Nobel prize.
>
>What was fascinating about this particular variant was the way it managed
to
>get played out in public, from the first shot in the article in the
>Independent through the Anonymously Circulated Dossier and articles in the
>Cherwell up to the climactic moment of Walcott's withdrawal.  Bingo!
>Mission Over!  And Ruth Padel gets triumphantly elected.
>
>Then of course -- did nobody tell these people about electronic data
>trails? -- it all began to unravel.  The Walcott Dossier had been
>photocopied page after page from _The Lecherous Professor_ and the results
>posted by hand, slightly primitive in this day and age, so I suppose it was
>hardly surprising that elsewhere in the universe, Ruth Padel didn't seem to
>realise that her various emails -- there were three of them which finally
>emerged, forming a narrative themselves -- might just possibly reach the
>public domain.  Especially as they were sent to a journalist.  Or that the
>emails would be date-stamped, so that the various not-entirely consistent
>statements in them could be put together.  I mean, the Ruth Padel Emails
>constituted a comic epic, albeit micro-sized, in themselves.
>
>My favorite moment of electronic ineptitude was the revision made to Seth
>Abramson's blog, after he, as he would have it, received a letter from a
>Worried Student at Oxford, and proudly proclaimed that Concerns Were Being
>Raised.  Seth initially received his Oxford Letter forwarded by a
>correspondent with no source and an untraceable name as a comment to his
>blog.  He first posted it there in its entirety, then, after (silently)
>deleting two signatures included at the end of the original letter, shifted
>it front and centre to his blog, printed in such a way as to conflate the
>"Here you are" introduction with the letter itself, and implied it was from
>A Real Oxford Student.
>
>Problem was, Seth didn't seem to have realised the original version of his
>blog was held in a google cache, and as a result, for a period of about a
>week, showed up in the google search engine and could be retrieved.  And
>read.  And compared to the "revised" version he finally settled on.  Not
>very clever, really.
>
>Smugly implying that "all Oxford elections are a bit dubious" profits no 
>one
>other than the people behind the really quite extraordinary and
>heavily-orchestrated catastrophe that was the previous election.
>
>Robin