Bringing Poetry from the Shadows

So the weeks of campaigning are over, the spats are being covered in a layer of settling dust and the dilettante candidates are vanishing over the horizon, hopefully never to bother poetry in the name of self-promotion again (yes, I do mean Roger Lewis). And Geoffrey Hill has won the Oxford Poetry Professorship, as was expected.

A shame, then, that the whole closing process has been marred by triumphalism and snooty dismissals, from some quarters, of all the other candidates. "Geoffrey Hill Triumphs..." blared Oxford University's website and a litter of Twitterers tweeted this chest-beating all across the web. A shame that Hill's muscular verse and criticism couldn't be left to speak for itself.

Hill is a remarkable, lauded poet, but University and media shouting about Hill's many awards just betrays the gaping hole in the heart of the process, as well as exposing their blinkered view of what poetry could and should be. Poetry should enliven, excite, enthrall, mystify, anger and entice in equal measure. It should not just be shuttered up in halls of residence, gloating about its awards. Spires can't get down to the business of dreaming if you clog them with snobbery.

"Unlike the others, [Hill] is a distinguished poet of international renown," sneered Harry Mount on the Telegraph website today. Yes, but is that all that matters here? Christopher Ricks wasn't a poet at all. Should he now be disqualified from his five year tenure as Poetry Professor? Of course not.

What matters is that poetry is served well. A certain side of it will be by Hill's lectures: academe most particularly. But poetry at the grit, the coalface, the street level? Poetry as a popular art? No, that won't be helped immediately by Hill's victory. Oxford has missed a trick here - it should have learned from Carol Ann Duffy's marvellous re-imagining of the role of Poet Laureate.

Which is why I believe that someone should create a Shadow Poetry Professorship, running concurrently with the Oxford Professorship. In the same way that Adrian Mitchell became Red Pepper's Shadow Poet Laureate, a professorship that is duty bound to address the needs of poetry and the readers of poetry rather than simply academic circles could revitalise people's perceptions of the art form. It would need to be sponsored by something less limiting than a magazine. I would suggest a newer university, perhaps one that wants to take a gentle poke at Oxford and has a wide curriculum including the performing arts. Or a literature festival.

I would also suggest appointing Michael Horovitz as the Shadow Professor of Poetry for whoever is brave enough or funded enough to set it up.

I am, of course, biased, as he's my father - but he was also Geoffrey Hill's closest contender. He came in a worthy second, if some 800 votes behind. My father may not be an establishment darling, but it is ridiculous of certain sections of the press to diminish him in the way they have been trying to - he has had a huge, enlivening and mostly unrewarded impact on British poetry in the last 50 years. And he would make a brilliant Shadow Professor of Poetry, at high brow and grass root.

So; who's up for it?