National Poetry Day is a huge marketing exercise so all the poets that are in that

"National Poetry Day is a huge marketing exercise, so all the poets that are in that book are going to have a huge boost. He probably thinks it's so petty that it's not worth even bothering about. But that's where the inequity comes in."Her line is that "writers publishing other people's ideas as their own is only acceptable if the originator of the poem, or style of poem, is widely known themselves" Lewis is not widely known. But Sian Hughes feels that this is unfair on the better known poets, whose work is endlessly cannibalised. "I don't know a single workshop exercise where we don't all sit down and steal somebody else's structure That's how you learn how to do it.

"I don't think he should be expected to credit Jenny Lewis every time he reads it," says Sian Hughes. "When he goes into print he puts a tag on it." Hughes argues that, by the same process of intellectual hand-me-down, in time McGough will also forfeit ownership of the poem "I've just invited 30,000 schools to all copy it. They are not going to thank Roger McGough and Jenny Lewis every time they print the results. If one of them turns out to be the Poet Laureate in 30 years time and his first poem ever was the one he wrote at school based on Roger McGough's, does that mean he's stolen it?"Jenny Lewis's concern remains that "In Case of Fire" has opened many more doors for McGough than it has for her. "He hardly needs more doors opening." Lewis, however, is currently doing a BA in English at Oxford, with the intention of teaching creative writing at university level. He said, `That's just the way it is'."That also seems to be the view of the Poetry Society.

Lewis was leading a multi-media poetry event one week in Dorchester when McGough did a poetry reading in the town. "A lot of my students went and he read "In Case of Fire' without giving me a credit So my students had all thought I'd based mine on his. They said, `Aaah, you cunning thing, we know where you got that idea now' I was just so angry. I just thought it was very off."McGough declined to be interviewed for this article. But Lewis recalls that when she wrote to him expressing her dismay, he did phone back immediately. "He said, `I'm sorry, Jenny luv, these things happen and there's nothing you can do about it.

It would be impossible to give you a credit every time I read it' I said `Why?' rather weakly. The assembled group thought it was pretty funny and original." It was included in a booklet brought out at the end of the course, and subsequently published in an anthology by Iron Press, Lewis's own publisher."I thought no more about it," recalls Lewis, "until a couple of months later I had a letter from Roger McGough, including a poem based on my poem, called `In Case of Fire' and using the same linguistic structure but tightening it all up a bit. Why not? But on condition that he gives you a credit alongside the poem if it's published'."In the event, the poem was not published. But it was widely recited at poetry readings, and even broadcast on the World Service. In the letter, he said how much he had liked and that he thought it was so clever and good, and would I mind if he published it? I asked my publisher for advice and he said, `Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. "For one of the exercises, we were asked to write a list poem. I couldn't think of an inspiration and just before we had to go and read these poems I noticed the fire regulations in the room: `in case of fire, break glass' In 10 minutes, I quickly wrote a poem.

My groupie tendency came out."Lewis wrote "In Case of Fire" in 1994. She was 50 at the time, and had been describing herself as a poet for five or six years. It so happened that they were overheard by Sian Hughes, the Poetry Society's education development officer, who decided on the spot that a poem which so evidently seduced schoolchildren would be an ideal teaching aid. She duly applied to Roger McGough, its author, for permission to publish it in the National Poetry Day teacher's pack of comic verse. McGough revealed that the poem, which was called "In Case of Fire", borrowed a technical innovation from a poet he met when teaching a course in Yorkshire.