“The whole time he was the director of the Queensland Poetry Festival he was plagiarising.” In recent days, British poet Ira Lightman has used his Twitter feed to highlight examples of Mr Nunn’s work that bear resemblances to already published poems. One was Fortune, from Mr Nunn’s 2010 anthology Ocean Hearted, which reads uncannily like Canadian poet Donald McKay’s Philosopher’s Stone. Mr Lightman, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, said that he was tipped off by blog comments on a poetry website and began digging deeper. “When I saw Nunn had deleted the poems I’d found, I started tweeting the screen caps and the sources; I also looked up archived copies on the internet site Wayback Machine,” he said.

“Having emailed Nunn once and got an unsatisfactory ‘whoops, didn’t do it on purpose’ type reply, I found more and more and kept tweeting them.” Mr Nunn published a statement on his website that said he used reading and listening to music as inspiration for his work, and that was sometimes “creatively appropriated in the formation of a new work”. “Have I credited the original work the way academia would have? No. Does poetry and music have a long history of sampling, of re-purposing, of homage? Yes. Will I continue to seek inspiration and motivation and keys to my memories and experience from outside of my own head? Yes. It’s impossible to do otherwise,” he wrote. “But let me be clear, my motivation has always been to charm the moment that has found me into a poem and only that, not to steal and never to cause harm.” Dr Lawrence, who recently helped expose Andrew Slattery as a plagiarist, rejected the suggestion that Mr Nunn was just “sampling”.

“To attempt to use listening to music and wide reading as a defence of plagiarism... is really quite obscene,” he said. “This is not a case of what we call an ‘earworm’... this was deliberate, this was clearly designed to create an impression that he was a much better poet than he really is.” Dr Lawrence said the Queensland Writers Centre should rethink the 2011 Johnno Award it gave Mr Nunn for services to poetry in the state. “If you as a poet are consciously, deliberately and ruthlessly undermining the very genre that you are being awarded this accolade for, then it really just makes a mockery of the award.” Mr Nunn is married to Julie Beveridge, who worked as manager of programming and marketing at the QWC from 2006 to 2013.

In 2013, Ms Beveridge became the programming manager of the Brisbane Writers Festival, where Mr Nunn was a guest. Dr Lawrence said people would forgive Mr Nunn in time, but only if he admitted his mistakes and showed remorse. “He’s making a rod for his own back, and I think the sooner he comes out and says ‘I really stuffed up and I was a plagiarist’, the better for him.” brisbanetimes.com.au contacted the Queensland Writers Centre for comment. Philosopher’s Stone by Don McKay

-- and when, after I’ve wasted a lifetime looking, picking over eskers, browsing beaches, rock shops, slag, when after I’ve up and quit, you suddenly adopt me, winking from the gravel of the roadside or the rip-rap fo the trail or the

jewels of the rich; when you renounce your wilderness and move in, living in my pocket as its sage, as my third, uncanny testicle, the wise one, the one who will teach me to desire

only whatever happens; when you happen in my hand as nothing supercooled to glass, as the grey watersmooth rock that slew Goliath or the stone no one could cast; when you come

inscrib ed by glaciers, lichened, mossed, packed with former lives inside you like a dense mass grave; when you cleave, when you fold,

when you gather sense as omphalos, inukshut, cromlech, when you rift in the stress of intolerable time; when you find me as the moon found Li Po in his drunken boat,

whe you speak to my heart of its heaviness, of the soft facts of erosion, when you whisper in that tongueless tongue it turns out, though it can’t be, we both know--

Fortune by Graham Nunn and when, after I’ve wasted a lifetime looking picking over poets, browsing beaches, shopping malls when, after I’ve up and quit, you suddenly adopt me, smiling from the carpet of the Royal George

when you renounce your wilderness and move in living in the back room as its sage, my other the one who will teach me to desire only what happens when you come, inscribed by solitude

dog-eared, faded, packed with former lives inside you like a matryoshka doll when you gather when you fold when you find me as the moon

found Li Po in his drunken boat when you speak to my heart of its heaviness the soft facts of erosion when you whisper in that infinite tongue all that the world allows

all one could wish for though it can’t be we both know