LONDON - OXFORD University said on Tuesday that Nobel Prize winning poet Derek Walcott had pulled out of the race to become its next poetry professor, reportedly amid dirty tricks linked to alleged sexual harassment.
Voting for the prestigious post - which dates back to 1708 and was previously held by WH Auden and Seamus Heaney - takes place on Saturday.
But Walcott will not now be on the ballot after 200 academics were reportedly sent a dossier detailing a sexual harassment claim against him in 1982. He has never commented on the allegations.
'We are disappointed that one of the candidates for this year's professor of poetry elections has pulled out of the contest at such a late stage,' a spokeswoman for the university told AFP.
'We hope voters will still attend on election day on Saturday to vote for the remaining two candidates, Arvind Mehrotra and Ruth Padel.'
The poet himself, who was born in Saint Lucia and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992, told London's Evening Standard newspaper he did not want to be part of the race 'if it has degenerated into a low and degrading attempt at character assassination.'
Padel - a British poet and distant relative of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution - is now favourite to take the prestigious job ahead of India's Mehrotra.
The post is voted for by Oxford graduates and requires the holder amongst other things to deliver three public lectures a year - plus an oration in Latin every other year at Oxford's honorary degree ceremony. -- AFP
