Oxford poetry needs to broaden its accent | Letters

It’s wonderful that the Guardian continues to devote ink (and gigabytes) to the election of the Oxford professor of poetry (Report, 26 May), but you seem to have already decided it is a two-man race – man being the operative term – between Wole Soyinka and Simon Armitage. You have almost entirely ignored the only woman running, the fine poet, classicist and translator AE Stallings, who has also been a recipient of a MacArthur “genius” award. Not only has she the support of intellectual stalwarts such as Mary Beard and Christopher Ricks (a former holder of the post), as well as an endorsement from the Times Literary Supplement, but she had the second highest number of nominators after Soyinka. Yet in the Guardian she has been relegated to the status of “also running”, if she is mentioned at all.

Unmistakably northern, Armitage writes poems that are accessible to all, regardless of age, region and class