Legal Complaint On Poetry Book Review – Poetry News September 26th

This week on My Poetic Side we delve into the story of the poetry book review that has sparked a legal complaint.

The Times Faces Legal Complaint Following Scathing Poetry Book Review

The Times newspaper has found itself the subject of a legal complaint, following suggestions that it made that appeared to suggest that the Scottish poet Len Pennie had committed plagiarism.

The Times stated that Canongate Books had “lodged a legal complaint” against the Sunday Times, its sister title, over a scathing review that had been made of Len Pennie’s new collection Poyums Annaw. In the review, Graeme Richardson had compared the work of Pennie to William McGonagall, who is famously known as the writer of some of the worst poetry to have come out of Scotland. The Tay Bridge Disaster, his infamous work ends

The suggestion in the review that the poetry contains plagiarism is at the centre of the complaint. A section that looks at Good Girl, a poem by Pennie which is written about Laika, the dog that the Soviets sent into orbit in 1957 is where the issue can be seen.

Pennie describes the world in the poem as

ending with the lines: In the review readers are directed to look at a poem by Sarah Doyle, titled Laika and published in 2019 which contains the line The poem ends with

Richardson described Pennie’s work as “execrable” and compared her to McGonagall.

Pennie who is 25 has a huge online following, with around 700,00 followers on TikTok and over 500,000 on Instagram. Their content includes videos that highlight Scottish words. She has also been very open about experiences she has had with domestic abuse, in 2023 her former partner was jailed for physically assaulting her and subjecting her to a campaign of harassment.

A number of people within the industry have called Richardson out for the review claiming it is little more than bullying and stating how much pain this has caused to a woman who is vulnerable yet successful. Canongate Books has said that they refute all the allegations made against Pennie and that they are baseless. The story of Laika has inspired many since 1957 and to them it is clear that both poems are completely different both in their style and content. They went further to state: