Poetic justice is in short supply at the University of Oxford these days, if the controversy surrounding today’s election for the new professor of poetry is anything to go by.

In a letter to The Times, a group of distinguished academics, led by Eloise Stonborough, secretary of the Oxford University Poetry Society, suggests that the candidates in the race for the highly prestigious post should withdraw and nominations be reopened.

The move comes after the decision earlier this week of the Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott to withdraw from the election after an anonymous letter campaign against him.

Documents containing details of a sexual harassment claim made against Walcott by a Harvard student in 1982 were sent to around 100 of the 150,000 Oxford academics and graduates who are eligible to take part in the vote.

Walcott described it as “a degrading attempt at character assassination” and stood down. This turned the competition into a two-horse race between Ruth Padel, 63, a former chairman of the Poetry Society and the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin, and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, 62, a literary critic and professor of English at the University of Allahabad, India.

But the signatories of the letter have cried foul, arguing that “many other names might have been nominated for this post if Walcott had not been present in the race”.

Walcott’s sudden withdrawal has not given his supporters sufficient time to reconsider and re-evaluate the two remaining candidates, they add.

The letter comes after another in yesterday’s Times from the poet Alan Brownjohn, himself a former candidate for the post, for the election to be called off. “There would be little pride or dignity for the winner of a contest from which a Nobel Laureate had felt obliged to withdraw in these sorry circumstances,” he said.

Surprisingly, the campaign for the election to be suspended has been backed by the author N.M. Kelby, who brought a case for sexual harassment against Walcott in 1996 while she was a student at Boston University.

Writing in Times Online, she said: “Derek Walcott is not an evil man. Like any man, he is flawed. But, like any great man, he is retrospect and understands that his flaws are universal. And from them, he creates art.”

Staff at the university are nonplussed by the controversy. Rules governing the election for the professorship of poetry are laid down in unbendable university statutes. There simply would not be sufficient time to hold a new election before the end of the Trinity term on June 19.

The only way for the election to be halted at this late stage would be for both the remaining candidates to pull out. But they have not. “It’s a bit like the Grand National, it wouldn’t stop unless there was not a single horse left standing,” a spokesman said.

About 150,000 members of the University of Oxford, including any graduate who has been through a graduation ceremony, and members of the University Congregation are entitled to vote in the election today. The result will be announced this evening.

At the last election five years ago, when Christopher Ricks won, 500 votes were cast.

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