Andrew Motion has defended his new poem, An Equal Voice, against accusations of plagiarism. As Dominic Kennedy reports in
The Times:
The former Poet Laureate yesterday insisted that his use of quotations that he discovered in a history book belonged to a noble tradition of “found poetry” dating back to Shakespeare.
But Ben Shephard, an expert who produced The World at War for television, complained that the poet had been “extracting sexy soundbites” from his painstaking work on military psychiatry.
You can read
An Equal Voice on The Guardian website. Here's an extract:
There were some cases of nervous collapse
as the whistle blew on the first day of battle.
In general, however, it is perfectly astonishing
and terrifying how bravely the men fight.
Hmm. 'Found poetry' is all very well - unless you're the writer whose work has been ripped-off.
ReplyDeleteDepends where you "find it" -I've written poems that were prompted by letters or diary extracts etc. but I wouldn't rip off someone else's work - I've never even directly quoted without acknowleging the source - it's waht's called ethics !
ReplyDeleteAnd comparing yourself to Shakespeare is to be honest, just arrogant. The extract's banal !