OXFORD University Press has recalled thousands of books just days before publication because they malign a poet.
The Oxford Guide to Contemporary Writing was due to go on sale on Thursday. But editors have noticed that the entry for Sam Hunt, one of New Zealand's leading poets, says he is known "less for the quality of his poems than for the vigour with which he tours the country performing in hotel bars in tight jeans and varying degrees of drunkenness".
"It's all rather bizarre and perplexing," Hunt said from his home in Wellington last night, not least because the book's authors were clearly unaware that he was teetotal. "It's public knowledge that I haven't drunk alcohol for years, and so for a so-called prestigious publisher like the OUP to get that wrong is extraordinary," he said. "A school-kid would have known that."
Hunt did confess to a penchant for tight drainpipe trousers. "I can see my shoes and I know which way I am pointing," he said. But more wounding than the unflattering descriptions was that hardly any mention was made of his poems. "All they did was talk about some TV commercials I have done when I have published seven books and made several movies over the last few years," he said.
It will cost thousands of pounds to put things right. Each book will be rebound with the offending page being replaced by a more positive entry on Hunt's work.