At some point yesterday, @kitienen/@setavulos (Nick) posted this, accusing me of plagiarizing two of their poems. (I’m not positive of Nick’s pronouns; I’m using “their” as a gender-neutral option. If anyone would like to notify me of Nick’s preferred pronouns, I’ll happily adjust this post.) I struggled with whether or not to respond, because I feel like any response will just be seen as a he-said, she-said situation, and I don’t want to spend days or weeks just going around in circles. But the post crossed my dash a couple of times today, so I felt that I at least needed to make a statement about it. I’ll try and keep this as concise as possible.
1) Setting aside every other question of accuracy and validity, if I had gone through Nick’s poetry and rewritten two of Nick’s poems to the extent that they are different poems, that would not be plagiarism. The central claim of Nick’s post – that I “copied” those poems – is simply false. My poem “How We Met” uses the word “fled” and Nick’s poem “In the Forms You Come to Me” uses the word “run”. That’s … that’s just English. Those are synonyms. My poem uses epithets and descriptions from the post I wrote a couple of months ago regarding the idea of Artemis as a lunar goddess, which has been a fundamental part of what I know of her. This is simply not plagiarism. Nothing is copied, nothing is stolen and passed off as my own work. These poems are my own work: I started with deities, had ideas, put words to them. It’s the same process I use for every poem.
2) I’ve got some 15-20 tabs open at any given time, and a lot of them are indeed tumblr Hellenic poetry. At this very moment, I’ve got @temples-wreathed-in-laurel and @pomegranateandivy‘s lists of their poems open, along with about a dozen other tabs. I like to read poetry. I also have my browser set to reopen the tabs I had open every time it restarts, so it’s extremely likely that TWIL and P&I will have tons of hits from my IP on their page if they’re tracking that kind of thing. What I’m saying here is that I use tabs like bookmarks for when I get around to something, and I’m sorry to all the people whose statcounter logs I am cluttering ^^;;
3) I wish Nick had spoken to me about this. If Nick had messaged me saying “Your poems look similar to my poems, what happened here?”, this would be a very different conversation.
4) Of course, Nick couldn’t message me, since Nick has had me blocked since, as best I can tell, December. Prior to that, Nick was complimenting me and trading aesthetic and poetry requests with me. I’m still not sure why Nick blocked me, and despite me finding out that I was blocked and being vocally surprised by it, I’ve never been given an explanation. I’m not owed one; I’m just noting that, since Nick claims, “I made it clear to her I didn’t want to interact after I blocked her and after she noticed that I did, but that didn’t happen. She escalated.” If “made it clear to her” means “I completely ignored her while making literally dozens of posts about how I felt ‘unsafe’ because she disagreed with me even though she literally had no way to communicate with me”, then sure. That’s totally what happened. And I screencapped those posts.
5) Nick’s claim that they have been “taking [their] space and letting [me] have [mine]” is true … ish. I personally think that nonstop vagueblogging because I responded to a post by making my very own brand-new post that didn’t use Nick’s name at all is passive-aggressive and childish, not maintaining a respectful distance. I am perfectly willing to say that we just have different standards for interpersonal relations.
6) I’d really love to know how posting poetry is “com[ing] after you” and how posting it publicly is “how [I act] behind the scenes”, but I’m never going to, and I’ve accepted that.
7) I really appreciate all of you who reached out to me, both to give me a chance to defend myself and to express your support of me. I appreciate all of you who rebutted Nick’s post by pointing out that using “bow” two lines away from where it is used in someone else’s poem is not in fact “the same descriptions […] in the same places”. Having said that, I’d prefer that Nick’s post not be reblogged any further, even to refute it. I do, in fact, derive some of my income from my writing, but more than that, it is hurtful to me to see “PLAGIARISM” in big letters attached to my name – even though the accusation is patently untrue. Obviously I have no control over what anyone reblogs, and I completely understand that people may want that post for their own records or to discuss further. I’m just putting my wishes out there for anyone who cares.
Again, I want to thank everyone who has offered me support – I don’t want to name you publicly, because I’ve seen how Nick and/or Nick’s friends respond to people disagreeing with them. Just know that I have deeply appreciated your messages, both public and private, and you have bolstered my spirits considerably. Thank you much ^^
