Having recently put myself forward as a potential candidate for the forthcoming Oxford poetry professorship election, I am gobsmacked to discover that this venerable university has pulled a drawbridge up against anyone older than 69 qualifying for such a long-memoried position. Applying conventional retirement rules to a four- to five-year job feels like a retrograde step on the part of Oxford. Such discrimination is particularly inimical to the roles poetry and poets play in society.
Poets tend to resist institutionalisation and rarely if ever retire. Good poetry itself is, as Ezra Pound declared, “news that stays news”. To rule out the potential contributions of numerous older poets who may want to apply in years to come, at a point in life when they will be likely to have achieved a considerable knowledge of poetic arts and crafts, seems not just unfair, but wilfully to defy administrative logic.
I beseech my Oxford alma mater to rethink this blind, blanket application of routinely youthist policy, which will limit the dissemination of thought and learning from the very people who have devoted long careers to poetry, for what appears to be no good reason whatever.
Let these philistine regulations be scrapped from future elections, so that the learning the professorship is supposed to impart can remain as free and as far-reaching as is humanly possible.
Let us revive due practical esteem for the likes of Chaucer’s Clerk of Oxenford, for “… al that he myghte of his freendes hente, / On bookes and on lernynge he it spente … / Sownynge in moral vertue was his speche / And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche”.
Michael Horovitz
New Departures/Poetry Olympics
You note that “The laureateship is not known for bringing the muse of poetry” (Hunt still on for next poet laureate after Dharker says no to honour, 4 May). This sentiment is echoed by sagacious Bertie Ramsbottom (alter ego of writer Ralph Windle, 1930-2019): “I doubt you’ll need me to narrate / The duties of the Oveate – / By which, as Poet to the Queen, / I adumbrate the regal scene, / And celebrate in verse and stanzas, / The more outlandish Royal Bonanzas.” (from Bertie’s Book of Improbable Sheep, 2016)
Christine Elliott
London
Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters