Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Poet withdraws from Forward Prize over plagiarism

BBC News

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  The poem will not be performed at the ceremony either

Poet CJ Allen has withdrawn from the Forward Prize shortlist after admitting to plagiarism in some of his earlier work.

His poem Explaining the Plot of Blade Runner to My Mother Who Has Alzheimer's was up for best single poem. The awards take place on 1 October in London.
Fellow poet Matthew Welton said he noticed last year that Allen had plagiarised some of his work.
Allen said he accepted he had plagiarised "certain poems".

In an email to the Forward Arts Foundation, Allen wrote: "I accept that I did plagiarise certain poems (although it was genuinely not my intention to deceive), and that I am withdrawing from the competition because of the intolerable strain of the recent, negative publicity surrounding this.
"However, I continue to maintain that the poem submitted to the Forward Prizes is original."

Writing on his blog earlier this month, Welton said he first noticed Allen had plagiarised his work in May 2012, a few days after seeing him give a reading in Nottingham.
He subsequently bought a couple of Allen's books but when looking through At The Oblivion Tea Rooms, he "noticed that a number of the poems were in fact versions of my own poems with a few changes made".
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