Derek Walcott pulls out of poetry professor race

The Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott has been forced out of the running for professor of poetry at Oxford University by a smear campaign. Anonymous letters detailing allegations of sexual harassment against the 79-year-old West Indies-born poet - who was frontrunner for the position - were sent to more than 100 Oxford professors in an attempt to influence next weekend's election.
 
The documents refer to an allegation made against Walcott by a Harvard student in 1982. The student alleged that while discussing her work with Walcott after class, he asked her to "imagine me making love to you. What would I do?... Would you make love with me if I asked you?" She said that after rejecting his advances, the professor gave her a C grade.
 
Walcott, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature a decade later, in 1992, was made to apologise to the student. But he denied it was sexual harassment and claimed that what he said to the student should be attributed to his "deliberately personal and intense" teaching style. He also said he had "sensed no reluctance [in the student] to pursue the topic of sexual relationships".
 
The anonymous letters received in Oxford also contained a photocopied page from the book The Lecherous Professor: Sexual Harassment on Campus, by Billie Wright Dziech and Linda Weiner.
 
Walcott said yesterday that he was disappointed that such "low tactics" had been used in the election and announced he was pulling out. "I do not want to get into a race for a post where it causes embarrassment to those who have chosen to support me for the role or to myself," he told the London Evening Standard.

Walcott had been backed for the post - ­ the most influential in poetry in the UK behind that of Poet Laureate - ­ by some of the biggest names in the literary world, including Booker Prize winner Alan Hollinghurst, novelist Marina Warner and the academic Hermione Lee.
 
Following Walcott's withdrawal, the two remaining candidates are the little-known Indian Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and the London-born Ruth Padel, who is supported by the new Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Victoria Glendinning and AC Grayling. Walcott is now backing Padel, his former rival, saying she is a "gifted poet" who would make a "great" professor of poetry. ·