Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Oh what a tangled web we weave...

The culture of spin that's infected the body politic in Britain seems to have seeped into the poetry world, or at least into its upper echelons, judging from the fiasco surrounding the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry. The campaign to discredit Derek Walcott could have come right out of a handbook written by Alistair Campbell. And Padel's "apology" could have come from the mouth of one of our shamed MPs - an apology in which she says she has nothing to apologize for:

"I'd like to apologize to Derek Walcott for anything I have done which can be misconstrued as being against him"

You don't need to apologize for having been "miscontrued". The mistake she made was to get caught - that's what she's sorry about. Still, as Aidan Semmens has pointed out, at poetry's coal-face (small presses, webzines, readings in pubs...) the Professorship at Oxford seems like a distant irrelevance.

2 comments:

Andrew Taylor said...

Here here.

Ed Baker said...

and ...I betcha that she only apologized
acuse
she "found" Religion!


it's standard protocol

over here to public ally apologize (and get off especially for murder, rape, and may-hem..and other heenous crimes especially who use this (now expected, standard)

ploy are our role models to the youth..

progfessional sports super stars, music and political personages

caught with...