Canadian Poet Laureate Borrowed from Tupac

A Canadian poet laureate copying from Tupac Shakur: In September 2017, it emerged that Pierre DesRuisseaux had passed off texts by other authors as his own in a poetry collection. This was uncovered by British “poetry detective” Ira Lightman, who translated DesRuisseaux’s French collection Tranches de vie (2013) into English. According to research for the Guardian cited by Complex, 30 of 47 poems were heavily dependent on other works.

Verses by Tupac taken almost unchanged

This includes Tupac’s poem Sometimes I Cry: his verse can be found barely changed in DesRuisseaux’s text “When I’m Alone”. Billboard and The Source name Maya Angelou, Federico García Lorca, Louis MacNeice, and Dylan Thomas as further sources.

Lightman said the book seemed like a collection of deliberate translations, without crediting the authors. Further texts can be found in the poems section.