lol oxford professor of poetry

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/24/ruth-padel

should have gone with louis!

xpost don't even joke about that

background btw:

i) ruth padel, arvind mehrotra, and derek walcott are in the running for position
i) a) after walcott enters competition no one else wants to: dude's a nobel laureate, after all
ii) smear campaign involving anonymous posting of stuff about walcott's previous harassment suit to journalists
iii) walcott drops out, claiming the competition has devolved to character assassination
iv) padel denies any complicity, possibly before being asked
v) padel voted in as oxford professor of poetry

now (one week later)

vi) padel turns out to have emailed journalists about walcott's harassment suits even before the anonymous mailings

what i think is the interesting point, here, is that no one considered the thing an issue - even after padel had brought it up - until there was the OOH ANONYMOUS MAILING angle to make it look like more of a big deal, and less of a matter of public record. note that i'm not saying it shouldn't have been an issue.

lol oxford professor of poetry

lol oxford professor of poetry

fin.

I forget who said it originally (possibly that notorious snake, Henry Kissinger, but let's hope he was plagiarizing), but... revive famous quote about academic politics being the most vicious kind, because there was so little at stake.

http://accel6.mettre-put-idata.over-blog.com/353x499/2/43/67/20/blog-3/accident_losey.jpg

gotdam @ jacqueline sassard in this

Because I could give a shit about who becomes the 'Oxford Professor of Poetry", my whole response to this has been to feel bad for Derek Walcott, whose poetry I love love love, and now this is what he's going to be known for. Not saying the accusations don't carry any weight, they just don't really take anything away from my estimation of the guy as a poet. Lol at Clive James, though, for basically saying he may be a lecher, but don't worry, he's too old to be of concern.

She's resigned: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/25/ruth-padel-oxford-poetry-resigns

this was louis's plan all along

i'm curious about this mehrotra guy, tbh. maybe he should get the job.

"Some [of my] supporters add that what he does for students can be found in a book called The Lecherous Professor, reporting one of his two recorded cases of sexual harassment and that Obama is rumoured to have turned him down for his inauguration poem because of the sexual record. But I don't think that's fair."

admittedly that quote is from http://www.cherwell.org/content/8831 so take it with a pinch of salt

o man student papers should *not* be online. the whole thing is you get to grow up in semi-private.

don't worry, someone takes over the website every year or so and all the urls break without fail

caek that quote is in the grauniad link up there as well ^^. it is quite amazingly disingenuous, isn't it? cbc has her sending the anonymous letters as well - http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2009/05/25/oxford-poetry.html - but i fear this is chinese whispers. or, you know, lazy journalism.

i am trying to remember the poem that actually took place at obama's inauguration, now. some sort of long paraphrase of 1 corinthians 13?

It sounds like a line from Yes Minister. People in academia are clever, but not very clever.

A couple of prominent academics in my department were campaigning for her (well, stuck her manifesto to their office door). We are mostly out of the cool gossip loop and I don't think there are too many poetry readers in my dept tho, so I just assumed this was because she mentioned the importance of science and everyone's like "oh, yeah, read Seed, and Ian McEwan says science is cool, and art and science need to get along and C.P. Snow said that stuff" and all that, but I guess this was bigger news behind the scenes.

caek can i cleverly read between the lines and guess you are some kind of science-focused oxbridge academic? i did not know we harboured intellectuals in our midst

there was an angry quote from jeanette winterson, of all people, in the guardian today

caek studies dark matter

caek will be the first british on the moon

i did not know we harboured intellectuals in our midst

also obv u missed my scholarly erudition on display in well-regarded academic journal "I Love Games"

i am a science-focused oxbridge academic in the sense that i am a bitter overrunning phd student, yeah. there are whole threads of grad students though, so i'm far from rare (but i think i'm the only british phd student on ilx at the time of writing). there are a couple of u.s. faculty kicking around too.

p.s. max i have already been to the moon, it was lame.

did u not hear i was the british buzz aldrin btw

http://davidszondy.com/future/space/cap023.jpg

Anglo-Belgian moonlanding