Oxford poetry professor contest kicks off amid growing controversy

Three candidates – Alice Oswald, Andrew McMillan and Todd Swift – issue campaign statements, as efforts to exclude Swift gather steam

Just weeks after Simon Armitage was named the UK’s next poet laureate, the contest for the country’s second most important role in poetry has begun. Voting has opened for Oxford University’s next professor of poetry, with two of the country’s best known practitioners, Alice Oswald and Andrew McMillan, both in the running.

Candidates for the four-year professorship, which involves giving a public lecture every term and is currently held by Armitage, must be nominated by at least 50 Oxford graduates. Oswald, the winner of the TS Eliot, Costa and Griffin prizes, was backed by the most supporters, with 167 throwing their weight behind her, including former poet laureate Andrew Motion, novelist Mark Haddon and biographer and academic Hermione Lee.

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