A Canadian Poet Laureate Is Accused of Ripping Off Tupac and Maya Angelou

Pierre DesRuisseaux, a French-Canadian poet who was named his country’s poet laureate in 2009 and died last year, is being accused of plagiarizing the work of Tupac Shakur, Maya Angelou, Dylan Thomas, and others in his 2013 book Tranches de vie. The accusations, first brought by a British fellow poet and so-called “poetry sleuth” named Ira Lightman, first…