http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/9797693/Poetic-licence-revealed-as-plagiarism-in-poetry-prize.html
Poetic licence revealed as plagiarism in poetry prize
A prestigious poetry competition has been thrown into disarray after the winning entry was found to have been heavily copied from an earlier work.
8:20AM GMT 13 Jan 2013
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When asked in an interview how to describe his poetry, Christian Ward replied “imaginative”, before advising aspiring poets to just “be yourself”.
But Mr Ward’s imagination appears to have failed him when entering a poetry competition with a work heavily copied from another writer.
His poem, The Deer at Exmoor, recently won a poetry competition, but organisers of the prize have expressed their dismay after discovering that Mr Ward’s entry bears an uncanny resemblance to an earlier work by the poet Helen Mort, entitled The Deer.
Mr Ward is believed to have changed only a handful of words from Miss Mort’s poem, replacing “father” for “mother” in the first line, “river Exe” for “Ullapool” in the second verse and changing the reference to a “kingfisher” near Rannoch Moor in Perthshire, Scotland, to a peregrine falcon on Bossington Beach, Exmoor.
The Hope Bourne poetry prize, established by the Exmoor Society in memory of the late author and painter, offers cash prizes to the three winning entries for works that must be “original” and “inspired by Exmoor”.
