Word: padel
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RESIGNED Ten days after being named Oxford University's first female professor of poetry, Ruth Padel, 63, resigned, saying she'd "naively" told reporters about sexual-misconduct allegations facing Derek Walcott, her rival for the post...
...standing down only nine days after her victory. "I wish to do what is best for the university," she said at a hastily arranged press conference at the Hay literary festival in Wales, where she is promoting her latest book of verse, Darwin: A Life in Poems. Even before Padel, the naturalist's great-great-granddaughter, wove together fragments of Charles Darwin's writings to create her acclaimed poetic biography, she cited his ideas as an inspiration. "Darwin loved form; he's always saying he loved the rich, complex forms of what he looked at. And that's so like...
...poet and Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, withdrew his candidacy four days before the poll after the resurrection of 1982 allegations that he sexually harassed a Harvard student. Appearing in the British media, those charges found their way to Oxford academics in anonymous letters. Walcott's withdrawal left two hopefuls, Padel and the Indian poet Arvind Mehrotra, to compete for the support of Oxford's senior staff and graduates, all of whom are eligible to vote for the professorship. There had been, said Walcott, a "low and degrading attempt at character assassination." (Watch TIME's video "Lincoln and Darwin: Birthdays...
...Padel denied any involvement in the poison-pen letters but tendered her resignation after admitting that she had "naively - and with hindsight unwisely - passed on to two journalists ... information that was already in the public domain." Her departure proved as polarizing as her election. "What she has done is so much more trivial than her contribution to poetry," said the novelist Jeannette Winterson. "We ought to be able to look beyond the woman to the poetry. This is a way of reducing women; it wouldn't have happened to a man. But then Oxford is a sexist little dump...
...nominations for the poetry professorship, some potential contenders may be deterred by the scrutiny the contest is likely to attract. Sexual politics look certain to play as key a role in the new election as in the last. "I wish the next Professor of Poetry the very best," said Padel, concluding her press appearance at Hay. "And I hope she's a woman...