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Sir Andrew Motion has been accused of "ripping off" a military historian's research for his Remembrance Sunday poem about shell-shocked soldiers.
Ben Shephard, who produced The World at War television series, believes the former Poet Laureate plagiarised his work in the poem An Equal Voice.
The poem, published in the Guardian on Saturday, uses quotations from soldiers and psychiatrists whose accounts Mr Shephard spent 10 years compiling.
Mr Shephard accused the poet of "burglary" from his book A War of Nerves. He dismissed Sir Andrew's description of his poem as a "stitching together" of voices of shell-shocked soldiers into a "poem by them, orchestrated by me" .
He says: "What Motion stitched together were 17 passages from my book. Of the poem's eight stanzas, five consist entirely of material from A War of Nerves, slightly rejigged there is a word for this. It begins with a 'p' and it isn't poetry."
Sir Andrew denied the allegation of plagiarism and said the use of quotations belonged to the tradition of "found poetry" dating back to Shakespeare, who used whole passages from Sir Thomas North's Life of Mark Antony in Antony and Cleopatra. He said of Mr Shephard: "He misunderstands what found poetry is. It has a long pedigree."
Sir Andrew makes clear in the introduction to his poem that its title is a direct quotation from Mr Shephard and refers to his book by name.
Spot the difference
From A War of Nerves by Ben Shephard (2000):
“War from behind the lines is a dizzying jumble. Revolving chairs, stuffy offices, dry as dust reports ...”
“marching men with grimy faces and shining eyes ...”
“bloody clothes and leggings lying outside the door of a field hospital ...”
“I have been in the front line so long, seen many things ...”
From An Equal Voice by Andrew Motion (2009): “War from behind the lines is a dizzy jumble. Revolving chairs, stuffy offices, dry as dust reports ...”
“marching men with sweat-stained faces and shining eyes ...”
“bloody clothes and leggings outside the canvas door of a field hospital ...”
“I have been away too long and seen too many things ...”
Reader views (2)
Bang to rights I'd say.
- Steve, Brentford, 09/11/2009 16:26
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Nor was there any law of copyright in Shakespeare's day. Pedigree long or short, the distinguished poet should have asked permission first.
- Bloke, Lambeth, 09/11/2009 16:20
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