I know you will all have been waiting for an official San Marco pronouncement on the Oxford Poetry Chair. The thing about this piece of furniture is that it needs to be occupied by some pretty weighty buttocks, which being so, Geoffrey Hill was as things turned out the only plausible candidate. Sad to see the Sisters disgraced for the second time in a year by the ridiculous antics of Paula Claire, a soi-disant poet who could only have been elected by a field of sunflowers (see Youtube and weep).
Of course the Poetry Editor is currently in South Africa sporting a hideous rugby shirt, but I think I can safely say We would have liked to see John Fuller step into his father’s shoes (Roy Fuller, Ox Prof 1968-73), not least because he is, in Our view, the better poet. Professor Hill’s Olympian disdain for contemporary poetry is not, We think, well, OK, I think, the ideal qualification for the role.
I fear we are in for fifteen erudite speeches about minor seventeenth century divines and their agonising struggles with doctrinal trivia, and not much practical help for aspirant undergraduate bards, but Lucy lives in hope.
