Michael’s book’s Second Part then tells the curious story of how the Translation was much plagiarised by Simon Armitage. Michael had thought Mr Armitage’s 2007 version of the poem very poor; and he told him so in various ways. He also ‘monitored’ his integrity in matters of poetics generally as demonstrated in his lectures as Professor of Poetry at Oxford. He found his work wanting here also; and again he said so, in an extensive online essay.
It was at Oxford that Mr Armitage was given an ‘inspection copy’ of the Translation. And thereby hangs a tale that Michael is calling
The Tale of a Fox
(A Fox’s Tail)
As has been said, in the 2018 Revised Edition of his 2007 ‘translation’, there is clear and extensive evidence of Mr Armitage’s plagiarism.
*
Michael Gibson calls himself The Poetician. That is, besides his activities as ‘an organic husbandman’ he has for forty years made it his work to understand, conserve and promote the thirteen-centuries-old ‘musicalistic’ craft of ‘poetry’. He writes his own poetry and music.
He has performed and lectured widely at ‘Arts’ and other Festivals; in schools; and in the Universities of Manchester, Leeds, Durham, Oxford, Queen’s Belfast, and Leiden and Radboud in The Netherlands. Of these, Oxford has been his most frequent ‘stamping ground’. He has work on its ‘Woruldhord’ Old English resource site; and he was a candidate in the election for its Professor of Poetry in 2010.
Michael has on a number of occasions presented papers on metrics and poetics, and given performances of poetry, with music, at the Leeds International Medieval Congress (on one of which visits, together with a magnificent ‘street puppet’ of ‘the Green Knight’, he had a ‘close encounter’ with Mr Armitage – as is graphically described in Truth, Dare, Kiss… Cheat).
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