Irish Times 13th June 2009
Poets back Walcott
Seamus Heaney, Bernard O’Donoghue, Al Alvarez and Jon Stallworthy are among the poets who nominated Derek Walcott (above) as Oxford professor of poetry who have written to him to express their “dismay and disgust at the cowardly smear campaign” against his candidacy. The Nobel prize-winning Walcott withdrew from the race following an anonymous letter campaign in which Oxford academics were sent photocopied pages from a book detailing a sexual harassment claim against him by a Harvard student in 1982. The 19 signatories of the letter to Walcott said they had little doubt that their colleague Ursula Fanthorpe would have been as anxious to sign their letter as she was to sign his nomination form had she not died on April 28th.
In their letter, published in full in the Times Literary Supplement (issue 5540), the poets said they considered the campaign against Walcott to have dishonoured their calling. “We affirm our undiminished admiration for all that you have done – and continue to do – for poetry and drama.”
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