I find Derek Walcott's withdrawal from the election for professor of poetry at Oxford deeply distressing and regrettable, and even more so the way it was brought about. This election should be based on the merits of the poetry and the stature of the poet, not the morals of the poet.

In my view, the fact that Walcott was forced to withdraw, and the manner in which his withdrawal was forced, makes the election void. It is no longer a real contest. As a result I wrote to the candidate I nominated, Ruth Padel, and suggested that she and Arvind Mehrotra also withdraw in protest against those who had disrupted the election by discrediting Walcott on grounds other than his stature as a poet. This would make it necessary for the process to start afresh – ideally with Walcott being persuaded to stand again. We are after all talking about a Nobel laureate who, as Ruth Padel and everyone else rightly acknowledges, has first rate qualities as a poet: if Ruth Padel or Arvind Mehrotra were to win an election against him, that would really be something, because it would speak to their literary merits; whereas to win because anonymous and malicious persons witch-hunted Walcott out of the race would be a hollow and tainted thing.

My concern is with what should be the central fact here: that the election for professor of poetry at Oxford is about poetry, not morals. Plenty of poets in the past have behaved very badly in all sorts of ways, and far worse than Walcott is said to have done. Do we refuse to read them therefore? That is, do we silence their voices, exclude them, bar them, on the grounds that they did those things? No, we do not.

But the way this election has been disrupted is entirely about silencing and excluding Walcott on these very same irrelevant grounds. Were I standing as a candidate, I would withdraw in protest against those who used such tactics, in the hope of focusing attention on the wrong they have done. I would not wish to "win" an election which was so undermined and blemished. There is a principle at stake here which is a good deal larger than anything else that is at stake: and Ruth Padel (and to a lesser extent Arvind Mehrotra) are in a position to do something about it, by withdrawing and revealing the election to now be an empty charade.