Is Oxford voting for a celebrity or a poet?

13 May 2009

Literature and scandal have often gone together, writes Olivia Cole. But the withdrawal of Derek Walcott from the race to become professor of poetry reflected misplaced priorities

Before Walcott called a dignified halt, Professor Lee might have been running a campaign for Byron (who slept with his half-sister) himself or Yeats (who proposed to Maud Gonne’s daughter) when she boldly asked: ‘Should great poets who behave badly be locked away from social interaction? We are acting as purveyors of poetry not of chastity.’

Sylvia Plath’s model for her own carnivorous use of her experiences for her art was her sometime creative writing tutor, the eminently badly behaved Robert Lowell. He wrote one of the greatest love poems of the 1960s about campus shenanigans: ‘All life’s grandeur/ Is something with a girl in summer...’ The ‘something’ today would probably be termed a case for Ms Wright Dziech and Ms Weiner.

But Plath and Lowell didn’t create interest in the private lives of writers, they took it as a given. And it’s not a 20th-century fixation either: Shelley’s elegy for Keats, ‘Adonais’, is written with all of the savvy romanticism of a modern-day picture editor. What they share is the knowledge that the death of someone young, beautiful and broken-hearted has a potency all of its own.

Beyond sex and death, the other big safe literary themes are divorce and dentistry: there’s never more interest in a multiple Booker winner than when his marriage is on the rocks or his teeth are falling out. Whereas Kate Moss, Madonna and Jennifer Aniston make the world of gossip magazines go round, for the ‘serious’ media the favoured literary leads are: Martin Amis (his father; Tina Brown; his teeth; his connection to Fred West and/or how he exploited it), Salman Rushdie (his wives; whether or not he was ‘worth’ the bill to protect him and/or is he grateful) and Ian McEwan (his lost adopted brother and/or the time his ex-wife ran off for 48 hours with his kids, therefore inspiring all evil in his novels).

And every so often a bright shiny new character, say a literary version of Lindsay Lohan or Lady Gaga, is added to the firmament — preferably with an eating disorder, or an addiction, or a weakness for unsuitable objects of affection. This election has dragged poets even further into the gutter. In a culture that mindlessly confuses talent with celebrity, perhaps we need to be reminded that stars of the literary variety deserve better than this.

Olivia Cole is a poet, and writes for the London Evening Standard.

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

More articles from: Olivia Cole | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (2)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Post comment

anna

May 15th, 2009 8:41pm Report this comment

Surely the sticking point is not, did he or did he not make advances to a student, but, did he, as alleged, reduce her marks for rejecting these advances.

The first accusation is about lack of taste, the second about academic integrity and abuse of power.

I hope it is untrue.

Fergus Pickering

May 18th, 2009 7:35am Report this comment

Right. I wantto talk about poetry. Ruth Padel is a trendy establishment poetaster who has never written a memorable line. Can't we find someone better than that? Of course we can but we haven't.

Post comment