Towery City

Poet, translator, and classicist A.E. Stallings has been nominated for the position of Oxford Professor of Poetry. The post was established in 1708; if elected, she'll be the first woman on a list that includes Matthew Arnold, Robert Graves, W.H. Auden, and Seamus Heaney. Stallings herself has a few remarks. Angela Taraskiewicz has more to say in an essay for the Valparaiso Poetry Review that touches on strings, female storytelling, and classical mythology.

In other Oxford news: at the Chronicle of Higher Education, Carol and Philip Zaleski discuss Oxford's Influential Inklingsand their enduring cultural legacy. Elsewhere in England and the British Isles, Robert MacFarland is teaching us about landscapes, languages, and landspeak, ever since the Oxford Junior Dictionary decided to refine its vocabulary in ways that would make Hopkins weep.