The University of Oxford has opened up nominations for its next professor of poetry, who will follow in the footsteps of Matthew Arnold, WH Auden and Seaumus Heaney.

Currently in the position is acclaimed Northern Irish poet and academic Paul Muldoon, who steps down from his five-year office at the end of September.

The chair has traditionally been seen as an alternative to the poet laureateship and involves giving three lectures a year for a salary of £4,695.

Nominations for the role close at the end of April and if more than one candidate is proposed an election will take place in May.

While the last two occupants of the chair were elected unopposed, the position was at times in the 70s and 80s fiercely contested. When Seamus Heaney was elected in 1989, 451 people turned out to vote.

Muldoon, who won the Pulitzer prize for poetry last year, said when he took over the role in 1999 that people had difficulty reading poetry because they weren't really educated to understand it.