Quasinormal modes and greybody factors of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="mml31" display="inline" overflow="scroll" altimg="si31.gif"><mml:mi>f</mml:mi><mml:mrow><mml:mo>(</mml:mo><mml:mi>R</mml:mi><mml:mo>)</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:math> gravity minimally coupled to a cloud of strings in <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="mml32" display="inline" overflow="scroll" altimg="si32.gif"><mml:mn>2</mml:mn><mml:mo>+</mml:mo><mml:mn>1</mml:mn></mml:math> dimensions