A Forward prize contender has been accused of plagiarism by a fellow poet. In the third case of its kind to erupt this year, Matthew Welton says that CJ Allen  plagiarised a number of Welton’s poems in his Nine Arches Press collection, At The Oblivion Tea Rooms. The collection was withdrawn within two months of its publication after representations from Welton and his publisher, Carcanet.

Allen’s poem, ‘Explaining the Plot of Blade Runner to My Mother who has Alzheimer’s’, is on the Forward shortlist for best single poem. There is no suggestion that this poem is the result of plagiarism, but Welton told Write Out Loud: “What Clive Allen has been doing is just as much about plagiarism as that carried out by Christian Ward and David R Morgan.”

In his Carcanet blog Welton compares his own poem, ‘London Sundays’, from his collection, The Book of Matthew, with Allen’s poem, ‘The Memory of Rain’. Although the two poems are not transparently similar at first glance, Welton says that “many of the phrases that I would think of as characterising my poem are repeated in Allen’s: ‘as good as it gets’; ‘Dusk comes. Then rain.’; ‘like sunlight and dust’. The sentence that begins the second stanza is copied directly although, in removing the ‘never’, he alters what my poem is saying while using the same words and retaining the syntax and the list of images. The three similes there are repeated with some of the detail removed. Often he takes the words or phrases in my poem and simply swaps them for something closely related: ‘snatches of summer’ becomes ‘rain’; ‘gin’ becomes ‘alcohol’; ‘rumour’ becomes ‘banter’. And, of course, he keeps the entire structure and the rhyme sounds, and usually the actual rhyming words too.” 

Welton says that after At The Oblivion Tea Rooms was withdrawn, Allen contacted him “and tried to justify his plagiarism. He claimed to hold my work ‘in high regard’ and said his use of my poems had been ‘as a framework against which to build my own poem’. I don’t see any point in speculating as to why he should think it was okay to take six of my poems, make minor alterations, and then try to pass them off as his own work. “

Welton adds in his blog: “In using this article to make these events public, I am aware that this will become the third case of poetry plagiarism to have come to light within a year. I hope there are no more similar cases still to be discovered. Acts of this kind tarnish both the poems they plagiarise and the idea of a community of writers.” 

Both poets are based in Nottingham. Welton told Write Out Loud at the London poetry book fair that he discovered the similarities between the poems after buying Allen’s book at a reading. “I handed him the cash for his book. He never mentioned anything about it to me.”

Jane Commane, of Nine Arches Press, said the affair had been “distressing, as it would be for any poetry editor”.

Write Out Loud tried to contact CJ Allen, but he was unavailable for comment. He is booked to appear at the prestigious Aldeburgh poetry festival in November. Earlier this year he read at Nottingham’s Festival of Words. On its website he is quoted as saying: “Poets rarely get famous and never rich but there’s something rather valuable about this marginal existence that means that poetry doesn’t have to chase any market forces or pander to any passing social trend. At its best it gets the pure, unfettered chance to say something true and beautiful.”

The Forward prize winners will be announced at a ceremony at London’s Southbank on 1 October. Susannah Herbert, executive director of the Forward Prizes for Poetry, told Write Out Loud that there were no immediate plans to remove Allen’s poem, which is in the Forward Book of Poetry 2014, from the Forward shortlist. She added: “The poem is judged on its own merits. You have to accept it in good faith.”

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