NOBEL laureate Professor Wole Soyinka is the leading contender in a three-horse race to become the next Oxford University's professor of poetry in the UK due to be filled on June 19.  

A 300-year-old elected post, the position is seen as the top academic poetry role in the UK and so far, 90 candidates have been nominated for the post.  Exalted writers who have held the position in the past include Matthew Arnold and Seamus Heaney and among those shortlisted this time around include the likes of Ian Gregson and Seán Haldane. 

Professor Gregson, a poet, literary critic and professor of creative writing at Bangor University is being backed by 54 graduates. Seán Haldane, a poet, award-winning novelist and psychotherapist who ran for the post in 2010, has 51 backers, just one more nomination above the minimum of 50. 

Among the professor’s duties are giving one public lecture a term, as well as encouraging the art of poetry in the university. Whoever holds the position will be rewarded with a stipend of £12,000 a year to cover his or her expenses. 

First held by Joseph Trapp in 1708, the professorship, second only in prestige to that of poet laureate has been filled in the past by the likes of Matthew Arnold, Cecil Day-Lewis, WH Auden, Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon. Professor Soyinka, 81 this year, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986 for his wide cultural perspective with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence. 

In 2009, the election saw the acclaimed poet Ruth Padel, the first woman to be elected, resign less than two weeks after securing the post. Her departure came after the revelation that she had alerted journalists to allegations of sexual harassment which had been made against her rival for the position, Nobel laureate Derek Walcott. 

Following her resignation, the eminent poet Geoffrey Hill was elected the following year ahead of nine other candidates. Professor Hill, winner of a host of poetry awards, will complete his five-year tenure this summer, with Oxford graduates due to vote on their choice of his successor next month. 

Professor Soyinka, who writes drama, novels and poetry and who was imprisoned in solitary confinement in Nigeria during the 1967 to 1970 civil war, has received more than 90 nominations so far. Those who have nominated him include writers Melvyn Bragg and Robert Macfarlane.