Sir – In his engaging piece (Quad Talk, March 19) on the curious workings of the elections for Oxford University’s professor of poetry, Seamus Perry reflects “the university has leapt into modernity and embraced online voting and the result is in the hands of the entire Oxonian diaspora”.

Perhaps this would be the time to follow up (Professor of Poetry 1989-94) Seamus Heaney’s suggestions “... we could perhaps change the game a bit, perhaps, and think about a senior European like Hans Magnus Enzensburger or even American poets. It could be opened up, rethought in some different kind of way”(Radio 4’s Today programme, May 29, 2009).

Could I suggest a bolder move? The Qatari poet Mohammed al-Ajami, also known as Mohammed Ibn al-Dheeb, is serving a 15-year sentence (originally a life sentence) on a charge that in two poems “he incited the overthrow of the government and for insulting Qatar’s rulers”.

His poem, Tunisian Jasmine, which was uploaded to the Internet in January 2011, supported the uprising in Tunisia and in a 2010 he had written a poem of mild criticism of the Emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad al-Thani. Neither poem is any way seditious.

If this gifted poet and father of four could be nominated and, indeed, elected Oxford’s next professor of poetry, this would secure his release from prison and bring him and his family to Oxford.

In 2008, Oxford University was in receipt from the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development a benefaction of £2,390,000 and the His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani Professorship in Contemporary Islamic studies was duly established, with Tariq Ramadan appointed inaugural professor, a determined scholar and advocate of free speech who would be the perfect person to run Mohammed al-Ajami’s campaign to become Oxford’s next professor of poetry. We can live in hope?

Bruce Ross-Smith
Headington