Poem of the week

You are wrong. I clearly remember my remark, because I was reading Woman on the Edge of Time by M. Piercy, and I said that your piece was in a similar vein - much like star wars is in a similar vein to star trek if you like - it is nowhere near a rip of the piece. There is a difference.

Juliet - you can see your courteous reply to my comment - you actually thank me for the compliment. Sadly you cant see my comment, as that account was removed, and so all comments with it. You can grasp the gist of it from your reply though. http://abctales.com/forum/2006/01/10/xy-chapters-3-4

Liana, i always try to be courteous in my dealings on here as i know nothing about the real lives of the people behind the words and what issues they maybe dealing with. You didn't blatantly accuse me of plagarism but it was (imo) between the lines, however i chose to thank you for the comparison. Memory is merely a construction coloured by our own experiences and perceptions. We both remember it differently and that's fine. There is no ultimate truth. I just find it hard to sit back and watch this behaviour when a private email would have sorted it out and avoided embarassing the member who has stated to Tony she has not read that poem. I find you often jump in on these threads, yet you're a writer i admire and I would love to see you use your talent in constructive crit. But again that is your choice. I have no issue with you, personally, i don't know you. Just as you don't know SSS. Juliet

wow that IS an extraordinary coincidence ...

"I'm sorry to inform you but after a serious investigation into this I am now absolutely convinced that SSS had not read the Roger McGough poem and did not crib from it. The co-incidence must just be put down to being extraordinary." I'm not really clear how anyone could provide you with evidence which - on the balance of probability - is more convincing than the similarities between the two poems. I'm happy to accept that you're convinced that SSS didn't read the McGough poem then sit down and write her one straight afterwards. I'm not clear how either you (or in fact SSS herself) could be sure that she hadn't read (or heard) the McGough poem at some point in the past and inadvertently reproduced by the scene, subject matter and several key phrases. The chances of it actually being 'co-incidence' are in the realms of the monkeys typing the works of Shakespeare. "The doubt has been cast now, the member publicly humiliated, so well done everyone, give yourselves a pat on the back." Well, no. There might be doubt about the intention, there is no doubt that this poem is on dodgy enough ground in terms of copyright law to add up to a decent legal case. Whatever the past history, in this case it would've been very foolish for people not to point it out. "I just find it hard to sit back and watch this behaviour when a private email would have sorted it out and avoided embarassing the member who has stated to Tony she has not read that poem." I'm afraid this wouldn't have sorted out anything at all. Even if it was possible to prove that someone hadn't read something - which would be extremely difficult - not having read something is not an adequate defence against breach of copyright. The question is whether or not the copyright is breached. "I believe the film 'Children of men' is a direct plagiarism of an early draft of a book I was writing and posting about a world without men, but just because i assert it, it doesn't necessarily make it true." No but there's nothing wrong with copying an idea. If someone use the same plot, the same chacters, the same setting and lots of the same key phrases from your draft, you'd have a good case, as Mr McGough would here.

I rarely 'jump in' on any thread anymore Juliet. I no longer offer many crits as I tired of oversensitive souls falling down in fits of the vapours at any crit at all (not only mine, happens constantly. Until there is a means of ascertaining whether crits are to be tissue wrapped with bows of velvet or honest, I shall rarely venture.) But thank you for your blessings on my 'talent'. SSS's poem - she has done it before. Once, a coincidence. Twice - gets more unlikely. Thrice? Gerroff. No chance. You are an A level teacher of psychology arent you Juliet? Put those talents to use. As Bukh says, people are duty bound to point it out. Legally it's not a good idea to leave it on.

ideas are not copyrighted as the guys who took Dan Brown to court well know. The two poems are about the same event and use the word railings and accident, neither use particularly original turns of phrase. Grammar schools and feeling not good enough to be in them are memories for many who were born in the forties and fifties, if anything it tells us that SSS and McGough are likely to be of similiar age. A private email (if it were mine) would have made me either add a statement recognising the similarity or i may have taken it off concerned of the conclusions others might jump to. It would have been couteous to let SSS have that chance before this thread was started. Juliet

ta ra andrew ... see you again have fun with footie ... (as if i ever thought i would hear myself say THAT)

that was my point Andrew, i have never read the P D James book, yet if you looked closely at my plot you could suggest i plagarised him, hence why i know the film didn't plagarise my idea, but it certainly feels that way, from my perspective (which is what i was trying to illustrate, obviously bady:) Original ideas are very, very rare, yet we all believe we were the first to think of it. If SSS says she doesn't knowingly remember reading his poem, what right do any of us have to call her a liar? Enjoy the pub and match (yawn) looks like i'll be writing tonight, because dearly beloved would not miss it for the world. Maybe i could suggest he goes down the pub to. Juliet

"that was my point Andrew, i have never read the P D James book, yet if you looked closely at my plot you could suggest i plagarised him" When, in fact, you apparently don't even know that she's a woman. Hmmm! "The two poems are about the same event and use the word railings and accident, neither use particularly original turns of phrase. Grammar schools and feeling not good enough to be in them are memories for many who were born in the forties and fifties, if anything it tells us that SSS and McGough are likely to be of similiar age." Have you actually read these two versions? The overlapping 'plot' is one thing but without doing a bit GCSE English Lit for everyone, the McGough poem is focused on the words 'accident' and 'passing'. That's why he repeats them. These are also the pivotal words in the second poem. Is that really not obvious? I've only got a GCSE. I haven't even done A-Levels in this.

And yet I remain convinced that the truth is that it is a remarkable coincidence. It was quite rightly raised here - and the discussion has been quite correct upon it. No, of course, I do not know for absolute 100% certain that it was not plagiarism - but I've been around people long enough to have a pretty good idea when someone is lieing and telling the truth. In this instance I am convinced that not only SSS had not read the McGough poem - but she had never even heard of him. I was extremely sceptical at first as the similarities are so extreme but I have become convinced that it is so. This is not an area where I can be easily fooled and I trust my judgement on this one - for a number of reasons which it would break trust to divulge - however the conclusion has been reached, the poem removed and SSS has gone on her way. I, for one, hope she comes back.

never read any P D James as i said, and the film credits did not say gender hence my error, though i vaguely remember knowing this i will forget again i am sure and call 'she' 'he' in the future. That's a whole other debate, why woman writers felt/feel the need to use ambiguous or male pen names... but not sure the point you are making Buk? I was trying to illustrate how easy it is to write something and not know it is remarkably similiar to another. When the film came out i had never heard of the PD James book and therefore had a mad egostical moment thinking they nicked my idea, until someone told me it was based on a book that predated my poor scribblings by years, and I felt very foolish. I to have only an English GCSE, a degree in psychology does not cover poetry. However i think this particular writer has been hounded enough, and i am fed up with seeing the glee of others in 'outing' an alleged plagarist without ascertaining that fact to be true, like a witch hunt. Juliet

Fed up with seeing people being 'outed'? I wasnt aware it was something loads of people did. Just the odd one. I do recall someone posting C.A Duffy's Valentine in it's entirety once mind you.

'This is not an area where I can be easily fooled and I trust my judgement on this one - for a number of reasons which it would break trust to divulge...' This must be the story Tony uncovered: Roger McGough is a secret time-traveller. He stole SSS's poem then went back to the past and (having edited it to make it considerably better) released it as his own. SSS hasn't heard of Roger McGough because she's from a divergent timeline where he didn't steal the poem and thus never became a famous poet! Q-E-mother-flipping-D. I'm amazed there's even been a debate about this. It's brazen plagarism. It's remotely *possible*, I'll admit, that SSS read the poem, forgot, then wrote her own version. But it's still copied, and to add insult, it's a far inferior version!

I`ve no wish to turn this into a witch hunt, but SSS denied all knowledge of Liz Lochead`s "Empty Song" last time around. Having read both versions at the time, I can`t believe she had no prior knowledge of this poem-they were (are?) virtually identical. But imo, she is a talented writer, with no need to plagarise.

"That's a whole other debate, why woman writers felt/feel the need to use ambiguous or male pen names... but not sure the point you are making Buk?" Wasn't really making a point beyond a point of information. I more worried about Tony's well-intentioned but increasingly bizarre statements on the matter: "In this instance I am convinced that not only SSS had not read the McGough poem - but she had never even heard of him. I was extremely sceptical at first as the similarities are so extreme but I have become convinced that it is so." I've known Tony a long time and I know he's an honest guy, so I genuinely believe he genuinely believes this. This is especially worrying given that I think what he's suggesting is objectively outside the bounds of statistical possibility, let along probability.

'This is especially worrying given that I think what he's suggesting is objectively outside the bounds of statistical possibility, let along probability.' Hence the time-travel hypothesis - Occam's Razor, dude.

Even more worrying is Juliet's defense of SSS. Aren't they both Bedfordshire teachers? Does this question Juliet's objectivity? Earlier in the thread BBF raised the same question (plagiarism) against MikeyH (without any evidence)but who has risen to his defence? No one. Doesn't that strike you as strange, Juliet? That you go on and on and on and on in your defence of SSS (despite the evidence) but yet you say nothing for MikeyH. Very odd. Also, on your point on writing similarities ... yes, this happens all the time. When I first joined abctales someone compared my writing with that of ***** ******* and I was absolutely delighted. You see, there is a huge difference between being compared with someone and being criticised for copying someone. "How quick we are to condemn. Is it not a possible that both SSS and Roger McGough have had similar childhood experiences and SSS's only crime is not being well read?" Yeah, right, SSS (female) went to a public school and played cricket and her dad just happened to lurk behind the bars and she made a load of runs (whereas RMG took a a few wickets) ... if, as you assert SSS and RMG are of an age then it is highly unlikely that girls played cricket back in them dark days. "I believe the film 'Children of men' is a direct plagiarism of an early draft of a book I was writing and posting about a world without men, but just because i assert it, it doesn't necessarily make it true." Funny how you expected everyone to believe this statement and only ackowledged PD James after she was mentioned by others in reply to your 'yet another desperate defense of SSS'. Juliet, you are as fulloshite as your compadre... who, has also taken her poem down from another site ... odd that, innit? So, come on then, where's the evidence that MikeyH is a plagiarist? (I'll stand up for you even if that Juliet woman won't.) :-P

Plagiarism or not, props n ting to the peeps that spot these potential irregularities. Great knowledge. "This is especially worrying given that I think what he's suggesting is objectively outside the bounds of statistical possibility, let along probability." I've got a great piece of stats software at work called SPSS that I should only really use to find out the needs of the socially excluded and whatnot, but could be turned to just this sort of thing...

"i am fed up with seeing the glee of others in 'outing' an alleged plagarist without ascertaining that fact to be true, like a witch hunt." Ooh, ouch. No, sorry, that is completely unfair. The original flag was made in complete innocence. The similarities are so overwhelming that they would surely have appeared deliberate and therefore not a case of 'outing' anyone. It is not a case of replicating ideas or themes - that happens constantly - unavoidable. These two poems describe in detail one very specific incident, used to illuminate the flawed realtionship between a child and *his* father with the emotional sting being the father's excuse that his appearance at the match had been an 'accident.' If I had been asked to rewrite the original poem, I don't think I could have got it any closer than SSS's version. If it was something once read and forgotten and then rewritten - well... if you publish it on a public forum, and you're willing to accept the accolades for it as an original work, I think you should expect to be called on it. Most writers I know would be reluctant to claim work that appeared merely derivative of somebody else's, let alone this. ~ www.fabulousmother.com

"i am fed up with seeing the glee of others in 'outing' an alleged plagarist without ascertaining that fact to be true, like a witch hunt." Historical accuracy point! Witches were hunted because people blamed them for the various maladies that befell them and their families. So witchhunting is essentially scapegoating. Throwing out an accusation ain't witchhunting. I'm sorry, Juliet, but I gotta weigh in with the plagiarist crowd here. There are similarities and then there's sameness. What baffles me, however, is that SSS has taken the exact McGough *situation* and applied her own language to it. I would have thought that in poetry the situation was easy to come by and the language the hard part.

i was wondering what would be acceptable ... to draw on the theme that another poet uses directly but to create a poem that doesn't (allegedly) plagiarise? maybe tony could set it for inspiration point? (making sure that acknowledgement to original is given?)

I think she probably read it and then forgot she had and it was stored in her semi-subconscious. I've done it before. Like the phrase that Styx said he liked in a recent effort of mine 'halo light of laughter' - I was reading through alain presencer's Love delight and sorrow recently and found the exact same phrase. I didn't realise I had stolen it, but I had! Never done it with entire poems or chunks thereof though. She isn't lying, I'm sure she truly believes she has never read it. But as a court would say 'on the balance of probabilities' almost certainly has. the Beef poem is very good. jude

I ain't no plagiarist. Or maybe I am, but I just don't know it yet.

Where Jorge Luis Borges to clear things up for us?

I think this was all just an accident. It reminds me of the time I was playing cricket and I was fielding in the slips. Various fathers would watch and applaud particularly good bits of play. My dad never came, so you can imagine my surprise when I turned and saw him peering through the railings. I waved but he looked embarrassed and walked away. I expected him to join us for tea in the pavillion afterwards but he wasn't there. When I got home I asked him where he'd gone - and it turned out by a million-to-one chance IT HAD BEEN SOMEONE ELSE'S DAD WHO LOOKED ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME EXCEPT FOR A FEW MINOR DETAILS ALTERED. What better epitaph then - for my headstone?

I accept that this may be the most likely scenario - whatever. SSS is absolutely convinced that she has never read the Roger Mc poem and that she has never heard of him. She is an honest and decent person and is very upset abut this slur upon her character. I have put it to her that I feel the most likely outcome is that she once heard this poem on the radio or read it in a book or newspaper, forgot it, but her pesky mind then recycled it and out it came. She is convinced it is not so. It's hard to believe but whatever the truth, the fact is that she is convinced of it. It's probably time we left it be now.