Jeff Side emailed me to say he got the following email from the list
moderators:
Dear Jeffrey,
due to your repeated, unsubstantiated and entirely speculative attacks,
in accordance with list rules you have been removed from the British
and Irish Poetry List.
Your sincerely,
Randolph Healy
Ian Davidson
list managers.
He's ask me to post the following statement from him:
Due to reasons that have not been explained to me, I have been
banned from this list. I am at a loss to see why this has happened. The
moderators in their email notifying me of this banning failed to tell me
exactly why, mentioning only that I have made ‘speculative attacks’—
against whom or what has been omitted. If by that they are referring to
my posts on the Oxford Professor of Poetry elections, then I can’t see
that as meriting my banning.
Perhaps they are referring to one of the following comments I
attempted to post but for some reason didn’t appear. I will leave it to
you all to judge for yourselves if I said anything meriting my banning
from this list:
In response to Jamie Mckendrick regarding the Oxford Professor of
Poetry elections:
“Ideally, the electoral rules and procedures you mention should prevail,
but we are both old enough to suspect that given the potential for
favouritism (and the politics of poetry seems to operate on this basis)
such transparency could be jeopardised.
Until very recently I had faith in the academic peer review process for
articles being submitted to academic journals. It was only after an
email exchange with an academic peer-reviewer for such a journal that
my naiveté had to be jettisoned. I am still, recovering from this. So,
yes, I am cynical about the patina surrounding the transparency of
academic elections and so forth.”
In response to Jamie Mckendrick regarding the Oxford Professor of
Poetry elections
“When Heaney held the post, most of his lectures concerned
themselves with defending the sort of poetic styles that his own poetry
relied on. So the post seems to have the potential to enable the
particular poet holding the position to use it as a platform for apologia
for their poetry. And because most of those likely to hold the position
will be those who write mainstream poetry, the pedagogical process of
disseminating the virtues of such poetry publically will continue. By the
way, the same would also be true if an “avant-garde” poet held the
post. Given this, I see no reason for the post to exist.”
In response to Robin Hamilton regarding the Oxford Professor of Poetry
elections
“I don’t see such a sharp contradiction as you do, Robin. I didn’t
actually say the thing had been “fixed”, though that was perhaps the
inference (which I have apologised for) I gleaned from Stevenson’s
quote.
I merely suggested that she might know something about any behind-
the-scenes machinations that went on. I certainly didn't claim that I
knew about such, also.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have used the word “fixed” in my apology, as it was
not a word I used in my original post, and has obviously misled you as
to what I did say.”
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