Although I was delighted to hear that Antiphon is taking a poem of mine for the next issue, for a moment I had a panic because it’s a piece I’ve altered drastically since, and I was thinking of sending it into the National in its new form (but same title). As it happened, I was so busy going on holiday at the end of October I missed the deadline for the NPC anyway – DUH, so later version of poem is still with me.
So now what – I really like the new version but I suppose I should give it a new title, make sure it doesn’t contain any of the exact same lines/phrases and think of it as something entirely new. I wonder if there’s such a thing as plagiarising one’s own poem? And can a poem be very very similar to another poem and yet a different poem? At what point has it ‘calved’? I’m thinking about some examples in art – cf all those Monet paintings of water lilies. Or music? Those Satie Gymnopedies are all more or less the same. (My husband might not be impressed by my saying that.)
Meanwhile I guess my entry for the Troubadour prize fell on its face – since I’ve not been one of the lucky recipients of a phone call summoning me to the prize giving! Ah well! Another year maybe …
You are an acceptance ahead of me….
and I have had those debates myself: when is an edited poem a ‘new poem’? No idea.
I think I may put it away for a while and then re-appraise. Maybe there are just a few elements of it I like and can use elsewhere.
There’s the Marianne Moore example – http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/poem/2009/06/marianne_moores_poetry.html
I enjoyed reading about that, and listening to the recording – thanks, Elly!