:: Farrukh Dhondy

Of snakes, mongoose and poisonous poets

By Farrukh Dhondy

May 30 : "The flattery of coteries;

The comfort of a stranger -

The luxury of palaces;

The shelter of a manger."

From Ode to a Samosa

By Bachchoo

YES, THERE is turmoil, as financial bores say in the London markets. The Mother of Parliaments has, for shame, taken to wearing a heavy burkha and yet in our green and pleasant, the politics of poetry retains a certain prominence. As in the time of the uprising of sepoy mercenaries against their pay-masters, the East India Company, there was a rivalry between Ghalib and Shaukh which some writers worthy of mention, there is now the story of a grand poetic contest in the sceptred isle.

Two actually. In the first, Carol Ann Duffy was appointed to the post of Poet Laureate, a relatively smooth affair though some newspapers hard-up for a story fantasised about male poets drowning in bile. No fatalities have been recorded.

Not so with the Oxford Professorship of Poetry which has been all games if not fun. There were three serious nominees before May 16, when all Oxford MAs would be eligible to cast their vote and be counted: Ruth Padel, an academic, broadcaster and poet, the Nobel laureate Derek Walcott and the Indian poet Professor Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. Having read the work of all three, but being the graduate of another university, I had no vote in the election. If I had, I would have driven to Oxford and cast a vote for Arvind.

His candidature, which came as a surprise, followed by a feeling of 'pour-the-hell-qua-non?, reminded me of the nomination in the 80s of a black Jamaican rhymer called Benjamin Zephaniah for the post of poet in residence at Trinity College, Cambridge. The post was to be awarded by a conclave of the Fellows of Trinity and for weeks before there was discussion in the media about this radical nomination by excitable undergraduates.

It was a gentle politico-rebellious act, one by which the grudgingly privileged seek to identify with the danger, suffering and cool of those who appear to live on the edge. It's the same impulse that makes the rebellious lyrics of Bob Marley popular with rich white kids, or makes those who were middle class suburban teenagers like David Bowie and Hanif Kureishi from leafy Bromley, desperate to emulate the "front-line" bravado and drug culture of slummy Brixton (where I, because it was all I could afford, lived for six years. Couldn't wait to get out!). Remember that recent Cambridge poets such as Ted Hughes had set some standards.

On the day, the electors emerged from their conclave and announced the winner, who wasn't Mr Zephaniah. His undergraduate supporters had gathered outside in numbers to hear the verdict. An unspoken accusation of "racism" floated above the crowd. The spokesman of the electors - was it the Master of Trinity? - was asked by the gathered reporters why the prize hadn't gone to Mr Zephaniah. "We did consider him, but found his work of no discernible merit", was the reply.

Note the "discernible" - the judicious and yet dismissive admission that the verse may have some "merit" but it wasn't immediately apparent to the dons. In this month's Oxford election, before the deadline of the 16th, a more malicious controversy was unleashed. A few hundred of the important electors of Oxford and some journalists were sent e-mails which pointed out that Nobel-wallah Walcott, while teaching at Boston and Harvard in 1982 and 1996, had been accused of sexual harassment and assault by two women who wrote a book about it all called The Lecherous Professor. That such allegations were being circulated was reported in the Oxford newspaper Cherwell. Mr Walcott, the favourite, withdrew from the race May 12, saying: "While I was happy to be put forward for the post, if it has degenerated into a low and degrading attempt at character assassination, I do not want to be part of it".

Ms Padel was duly elected, beating Professor Mehrotra. She said her victory had been "poisoned by the cowardly acts" of the campaign against her rival. These proved to be crocodile tears as it was subsequently revealed that Ms Padel had herself written the e-mails to at least two newspapers implying that the undergraduates of Oxford could look forward to sexual harassment if Mr Walcott won. Ms Padel's supporters were disappointed and outraged and called on her to step down. On the 25th she did. Mr Walcott, asked for comment, said, "Karma is not a tradition I knew as a lad, but it is something I know to exist, whether we can call it by name".

It is ironic that Mr Walcott should resort to this line of argument. Of course, as an Afro-Caribbean "karma" would not be a tradition he would have known. I wonder if V.S. Naipaul, his fellow Caribbean writer and Nobel laureate, has followed this saga of the Oxford Chair and whether it has reminded him of the "karma" he would have heard of as a lad in his Brahmin household. My wonder is prompted by the fact that Mr Walcott launched a vicious attack in verse on Sir Naipaul at a Jamaican literary festival in 2008. He called Sir Naipaul a "mongoose", probably unaware that the mongoose was brought to the Caribbean from India to challenge and rid the place of poisonous snakes.

Try an extract of Walcott venom:

"So the old mongoose, still making good money

Is a burnt out comic, predictable, unfunny

The joy of supplements, his minstrel act

Delighting editors endorsing facts

Over fiction, tearing colleagues and betters

To pieces in the name of English letters

The feathers fly, the snow comes drifting down

The mongoose keeps its class act as a clown

It can do cartwheels of exaggeration

Mostly it snivels, proud of being Asian

Of being attached to nothing, race or nation

It would be just as if a corpse took pride in its decay

After its gift had died and off the page its biles exude the stench

Of envy, "la pourriture" in French

Now that Mr Walcott believes in karma, he should be alerted to the fact that attacking mongooses is fatal for snakes. They get accused. I have recently had confirmation of this, having been shown the manuscript of a book which is about to be published which also exposes the sexual improprieties of another literary personage who also unfoundedly and venomously attacked this very V.S. Naipaul. Does the old curmudgeon really possess the karmic charm of the mongoose? Shouldn't all his critics beware?