"We don't expect the gatekeepers themselves, the custodians, to be the barbarians," he said in a speech to poets and OUP employees in Oxford which urged the OUP to change its mind.
The OUP made its decsion last November to sell off its list of 26 contemporary poets on commercial grounds.
The poets Tom Paulin, Jo Shapcott, Tony Harrison, Peter Porter, James Fenton and others were at the protest meeting.
Mr Howarth said the OUP had charitable status and was part of the University of Oxford, a Government subsidised body.
It publishes the Oxford English Dictionary, widely regarded as the authoritative guide to the language.
"But poets, certainly no less than lexicographers, are shapers of the English language," Mr Howarth said.
"The condition of contemporary poetry matters enormously for the quality of our civil society and of our public and political life. It reflects and shapes it."
He said that 63 other MPs had signed an early day motion in the House of Commons to deplore the decision.
Sir Keith Thomas, chairman of the OUP finance committee which took the decision to stop publishing contemporary poetry said the OUP "exists to publish scholarly and educational works - not contemporary creative writing.
"Painful decisions have the be made to safeguard this objective.I am afraid emotional declarations, however well intentioned, merely fuel misunderstanding about the realities of scholarly publishing."
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