Poets have a ready wit, rich vocabulary and active imagination and are able to respond to an opponent by improvising new couplets on specific themes within very strict time constraints.
Successful tsiattistaes (poet-singers) exhibit ready wit, deep familiarity with poetic and musical traditions, a rich vocabulary and an active imagination.
In our collective cultural imagination, however, Oxbridge means the dreaming spires - a kind of massive Bullingdon Club where rich undergraduates still flaunt their boaters and blazers, and dotty dons get sozzled every night on the college port (while hoping to avoid the Inspector Morse-style murders in the quad).