Elin Gregory

If you write derivative [fan] fiction – I used to, it’s a brilliant way of trying things and getting feedback on what works and what doesn’t – you’re probably used to getting criticism from people who feel that it’s plagiarism, parasitic, unfair to the author etc.

I wonder what they’d make of this video trailer for the BBC?

I think it’s rather gorgeous, especially for the inclusion of 2 same sex couples, but found some of the lines in the poem familiar while not recognising the whole, if you know what I mean. Today I remembered to Google a bit of it and it jolly well should have been familiar. There are bits of Keats, Longfellow, Walter Savage Landor, Shelley Tennyson and Arthur O’Shaughnessy with a couple of filler phrases from the compiler poet Alison Chisolm. Apparently the style of poem, which Chisolm invented, as called a ‘cento’.

If this isn’t derivative I don’t know what is.