
Congratulations to Alicia Stallings on winning election to one of the most prestigious poetry positions on the planet – the Oxford Professorship of Poetry! A thoroughly deserved success for one of the absolute best poets writing today. And how nice for all of us, that a formalist is recognised as the best choice. Her term of office begins in October and runs for four years.
Here is the University’s report on it: https://www.ox.ac.uk/about/oxford-people/professor-of-poetry
Been hoping for this for years! BRAVA!
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This is delightful. If any poetry can reach a wider public, hers can.
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I love her comments quoted in Wikipedia’s New Formalism entry:
In a 2010 essay, A.E. Stallings expressed regret that the writing of formal verse in American poetry remained, “an oddly politicized choice”. Stallings added that female and minority New Formalists continued to be, “criticized”, as part of what she dubbed, “that false dichotomy of free verse = democracy and empowerment and progress, whereas formal verse = oppression and elitism and kowtowing to dead white males.”
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