Letter: Eggheads for the chair of poetry

Sir: How interesting that Sandra Barwick (30 April) should describe Les Murray, one of the candidates for the chair of poetry at Oxford University, as physically and intellectually egg-like.

This is appropriate not only because the election procedure is 'inpenetrable', in the sense intended by Humpty Dumpty ('we've had enough of that subject'), but also because poetry itself contains for many of us the attributes of a boiled-egg - it's elliptical and opaque.

Yours faithfully,

ELIZABETH A. CARREY

Dundee

2 May