A hard chair

And there was I thinking it was going to be nem con.

There are ten remaining candidates for the Oxford Poetry Professorship. Paula Claire withdrew on 7 June, in protest over "serious flaws" in the election process, and favouritism shown to Hill.

We are used to arguments about what does or does not constitute poetry, but Roger Lewis doesn't draw a distinction between the patterned words and the metaphor. Like Geoffrey Hill (for whom Professor Dame Averil Cameron, Warden of Keble, has posted an encomium), Lewis hasn't written a manifesto. His case is extravagantly pleaded by Rebecca Nicolson (St Hugh's 1985). Tantalisingly,

If elected to the Chair of Poetry, Lewis' subjects may well include - Ezra Pound: Poetry and / or Politics; The Ramification of Richard Ellmann's 1,500 Factual Errors in his Biography of Oscar Wilde; The Nineteenth Century View of Shakespeare and Jesus and Great Cryptograms; Sullivan Without Gilbert; Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes: Sex, Violence and Difficulties with Girls; Poets of the Appetites: M.F.K. Fisher and Elizabeth David; The End of England: Eric Ravilious, Barbara Jones and Edward Bawden; and Dick & Liz at Oxford: The Burtons and Doctor Faustus.

But he won't be.

Michael Horovitz stands much more of a chance. It doesn't signify, but his facebook group has more supporters than Hill's. I just don't get his allegation that his religion is against him because it seems irrelevant to me - but maybe it's true that Christians are voting for Hill because he's a Christian... Have literature, and Oxford, come to this? I applaud Horovitz's manifesto:

Let the Oxford professorship's authority be revived as a platform for authentic poetry ticket-bookings, scheduling ever newer departures and in-depth arrivals way beyond mere careerist arrivism. Anyone voting for me is assured that I will continue striving to emulate Chaucer's Clerk of Oxenford: "Sownynge in moral vertu was his speche, / And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche."

Ruth Padel supports both Hill (with a damning qualification about his stamina) and Horovitz. (Snarky article in Camden New Journal at the link.)

Other candidates include poetry fundamentalist traditionalist Michael George Gibson

The literary and verbal things now presented and published as 'poems' are so varied that a fresh and fundamental examination of what was and is 'poetry' is well worth making.

[Edit: amended following a complaint from Mr Gibson's agent - see comments]

Seán Haldane if elected wants

to talk about the neuropsychology of poetry, poetry and verse, poetry and 'more-than-coincidence', poetry in different languages, and what Hardy called its 'sustaining power'.

Chris Mann, a former Newdigate prizewinner, offers samples of his work, including

Dragonfly

Rafting the Zambezi River,
I saw your filigree shimmer
on a boulder's bulky sphinx…

Maybe that wasn't such a good idea.

Stephen Moss is the Monster Raving Looney whose candidacy has been well documented in the Guardian.

So why I am standing? It's a good question. The idea came to me over a curry at the Hay Literary Festival last year.... What will I do if I win? Well, I will give the stipend away to needy poets and writers, and to good literary causes. I will set up an annual two-week poetry festival in Oxford. I will fight against the marginalisation of poetry, literature's perennial poor relation. I will buy anyone who votes for me a drink. I will, if necessary, go into coalition with Geoffrey Hill. I will back proportional representation in future elections. I will lecture on the role of poetry in society, starting with the Greeks and ending about a week last Tuesday. And I faithfully promise not to publish too many of my execrable poems. Can we win it? YES WE SCAN!

Sanskrit scholar Vaughan Pilikian's ambitions are as wide ranging as Lewis's, if harder to visualise.

I intend a lecture series to range across some, if not all, of the following topics: the poetics of science in the atrocity exhibition; antiaesthetics, esoterrorism and metempsychosis; the rhythm of the dig in the Negro spiritual; Japanese death poetry; rhymed trajectories to heaven in the Iliad and the Mahabharata. My aim in this august office will be to pull poetry from the drawing rooms and the garrets and the palaces, and send it forth. For poetry is a weapon, bloodsoaked and glinting. It is a gnostic heresy, a counterattack on all that holds us captive, a challenge to the cruel symmetries and stifled laughter of the Demiurge. It is only through poetry that we might revenge ourselves on time.

It is only through poetry that we might revenge ourselves on time. I could almost be persuaded of that.

Full Candidate statements here

I haven't voted yet.

Weblog

As any fule no, a blog is a weblog, and it started out by being a list of sites visited. As an antidote to Blytonia, here are some of the more interesting items I've come across in the past few days.

Jim Murdoch ponders the dearth of modern nursery rhymes.

Lorna Watts is refused the loan of scissors by a north London librarian: They are sharp, you might stab me.

Anton Vowl suggests what Gordon Brown should have answered to that question from Andrew Marr.

Belle Waring has an impassioned post on Crooked Timber about sexual harassment in the academy, with a sideswipe at "look but don't touch" Kealey from Buckingham. Mary Beard isn't so bothered. Is Terence Kealey as misunderstood as Juvenal? (Or as contemporary? I'm inclined to add.) Yes, it may have been satire, but it's pretty lame satire.

In a post entitled Because Men are Stupid and Shallow, That's Why, Jeff Fecke demonstrates that some men are capable of seeing the person beyond the breasts. He challenges the Canadian Rethink Breast Cancer campaign (aimed at raising men's awareness by concentrating on breasts):

the thing about breasts that I generally like the most is that they’re usually attached to living, breathing women, and I like women, because, you know, they’re people. Many of them are people I like, and consider friends. All of them are worth far more than the breasts attached to them; that should go without saying.

Ben Goldacre considers the AIDS-denialist film House of Numbers, which was shown at Cambridge Film Festival and (temporarily) hoodwinked rationalist sceptic Caspar Melville. Goldacre starts a lively discussion about how to deal with moonbats - exposure, ridicule, debate? Or by ignoring them? (There's no widely accepted noun for that, but ignoral might suit.) This comment in particular struck me:

The best advice my late Dad ever gave me was; “Never argue with an idiot, because people watching lose track of which is which”. The older I get, the more I appreciate his words. Several times a week, I’m given cause to think of them.

Teach the debate is what creationists say.

Jack of Kent argues why English libel law is a danger and makes a proposal for reform.

Shuggy has a go at performative theists aiming for the class prize.

no man ever forsook his father, mother, brother, sister, son or daughter and took up his cross in order to support the nuclear family, preserve the work ethic, reduce crime in the neighbourhood or foster charitable giving as an important ingredient in civil society.

Terry Glavin doesn't know how to handle the human tide, except that the handling should be humane. Who could disagree?

Right, I'm off to Oxford now for the launch of See How I Land.

Issues

Gmail is temporarily unable to access your Contacts. You may experience issues while this persists.

Issues? The mind boggles.

Of course I know what they mean, but it's the first time I've seen this used formally and it piqued my interest.

Here's dictionary.com:

1. the act of sending out or putting forth; promulgation; distribution: the issue of food and blankets to flood victims.
2. something that is printed or published and distributed, esp. a given number of a periodical: Have you seen the latest issue of the magazine?
3. something that is sent out or put forth in any form.
4. a quantity of something that is officially offered for sale or put into circulation at one time: a new issue of commemorative stamps; a new bond issue.
5. a point in question or a matter that is in dispute, as between contending parties in an action at law.
6. a point, matter, or dispute, the decision of which is of special or public importance: the political issues.
7. a point the decision of which determines a matter: The real issue in the strike was the right to bargain collectively.
8. a point at which a matter is ready for decision: to bring a case to an issue.
9. something proceeding from any source, as a product, effect, result, or consequence: His words were the issue of an intelligent man.
10. the ultimate result, event, or outcome of a proceeding, affair, etc.: the issue of a contest.
11. a distribution of food rations, clothing, equipment, or ammunition to a number of officers or enlisted soldiers, or to a military unit.
12. offspring; progeny: to die without issue.
13. a going, coming, passing, or flowing out: free issue and entry.
14. a place or means of egress; outlet or exit.
15. something that comes out, as an outflowing stream.
16. Pathology. a. a discharge of blood, pus, or the like.
b. an incision, ulcer, or the like, emitting such a discharge.
17. issues, English Law. the profits from land or other property.
18. the printing of copies of a work from the original setting of type with some slight changes: the third issue of the poem.
19. Obsolete. a proceeding or action.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.

Nope, None of those. On the contrary.

Then some similar definitions from another source including additionally:

Informal A personal problem or emotional disorder: The teacher discussed the child's issues with his parents.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Not that either. I try to keep sane when the computer plays up.

Further down the page:

Slang dictionary

n.
problem. (In colloquial use, issue has virtually replaced the word problem. It is even heard in a few idioms such as Do you have an issue with that?) : I had an issue with my car this morning. It wouldn't start. , You are late again! Do you have an issue with our office hours?
Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill

The car thing.
What's the problem with problem? Anway, why didn't Gmail just stop after the first sentence? I get the impression that "problem" isn't a sufficiently empathetic word for their purposes as they want to convey the nuance that We know that when things go wrong people get upset. I hope I'm wrong. It's infantilising. Not everyone gets upset, and it's something we all try to grow out of. If they wanted to convey a warm fuzzy Googly feeling, an apology might have done the trick.