News at Eleven: The idea was to make [Arvind Krishna Mehrotra]

the 62-year-old poet and professor of English at Allahabad University known to a wider audience. "The British poetry scene has been inward looking for many years,'' [Amit] Chaudhuri explained. "The intention was to disrupt that insularity.'' Mehrotra gamely agreed knowing that there was almost no chance of winning. "The point was not to win but to tell them there are other things around,'' he said. If he had won, Mehrotra said he would lecture on India's 2500-year-old poetic tradition from the poets of Gathasaptasati to contemporary bards such as Adil Jussawalla, Eunice de Souza and Arun Kolatkar.

from The Times of India: The curious case of Oxford's professor of poetry

~~~~~~~~~~~