The fact that themes are stolen in literary circles is nothing new. But that someone would steal poems already published in his own time and publish them under his own name is unheard of. It's almost hard to believe it could happen. One would still be able to tolerate the inspiration of this or that foreign poem with a certain amount of understanding, but to copy - including the title - a poem by another author is literally unheard of. Yet it happened recently to the poet, playwright and actress Eva Hrubá, author of 14 collections of poetry.
Eva Hrubá (born in 1951 in Nymburk) is a stalwart of our artistic scene, having performed on Czech stages across the country for over two thousand performances and, for example, she excelled in the play Hašler or What You Do at the Karlín Theatre in Prague, where she received the award for acting.
We know her, for example, from Nymburk's Hálk Theatre, where she not only played for years, but also directed, for example, Rolland's novel Peter and Lucia or Manon Lescaut. Her radio programmes and widely followed posts on social media are popular.
We last saw her at her author's evening in Prague's Lesser Town Hall, which was dedicated to her work on her 15th anniversary collection of poetry, which Eva Hrubá is currently finishing for a spring publication next year. She had no idea then that she had become a victim of literary theft, whose trail we have just followed with the journalistic block...
It all started so innocently
or for goodness sake, to the begging bowl
Apart from the above mentioned activities, Eva Hrubá has long been the head of the Theatre and Literary Workshop at the Municipal Cultural Centre in Nymburk. As a lecturer, she worked with a group of people interested in these fields, including Lucie Ottová (2013-2017). Eva Hrubá soon sensed her talent and began to devote herself to the girl in proportion to her creative abilities. Over time, the relationship between teacher and pupil became a friendship, following Lucie's request and Eva's empathy. Hrubá purposefully prepared Lucie for her debut as an author. At that time, she edited a column in the Nymburk daily, dedicated to the poetry of readers - Poetry is not Cinderella, where Lucie Ottová (born 1996) began to publish poems for the first time, after the tutoring of an experienced poetess, who often corrected and improved the submitted works up to eighty percent. It seems that these were the beginnings of the problem called authorship or co-authorship of a collaborating pair, which was opened this summer when Ottová published her first book of poems, entitled CORRECTION OF THE SOUL. The collection contains thirty poems, many of which are demonstrably written by Eva Hruba! Ottová is, so to speak, flaunting someone else's feathers!
A case for a psychiatrist or a CSI?
"Lucie brought me texts that had, for example, five great verses out of twenty, but they didn't fit together..." explains Eva Hrubá personally. "So I rewrote them with an example of how Lucie should work on a set of ideas of theme, logic and metaphor..." This normal working procedure thus gradually produced many of the poems that are now in L. Ott's collection.
Lucie made no secret of the fact that she would like to publish her poems in a book. So Eva warned her that if she did so, the only option was that of co-authorship, as the handwriting was strongly evident in the texts, to which Lucie Ott agreed in these words:
"Sure, Grandma, we'll publish a book together."
But it wasn't until a decade later that Hrubá learned of her finally forthcoming debut, a collection of poems by a budding author. She immediately contacted her with a proposal to include a version of their joint poems in the authorship section. Eva did not receive a reply to her email. She was later reassured by Lucia in a personal phone call:
"The ones we did together, there'll probably be two."
The language of facts
Eva Hrubá has no reason to make things up. She argues with excerpts from her correspondence with Otto dated 25 May 2023, when she suggested a serious approach to the publication of the book and insists that more than half of the poems in the collection Corset of the Soul are her work.
Lucie Ottová's response: 'Evi, I will reply to the email by Sunday with my comments and a suggestion to make it all right, because I think we are grown-up women and we will solve everything by agreement and without any problems. Thank you for your understanding Lucka ." In her reply, Eva Hrubá lists the poems in question. That is to say, the poems, including the titles, that she has rewritten more than 50, 60, 80 percent of.
"Hi Lucy, I read your email carefully and I am naming these poems for you: 'Emptiness'. A mirror in a can. He was heard. In the meadow /untitled/. Wrinkle Me 1 and Wrinkle Me 2. Contemplation. Spikes of helplessness. Dolphins. Bathrobe. Altar. The grinder. By the river. I'll spread the canvas. Night saxophone. Contemplation. Woman and illusion. Making love on the pavement. Lantern. (Addendum for the reader:These are the titles of poems that have been reworked from mere synopses, into poetry. They were basically examples of how to work with text, how to create, how to cut, how to create a poetic shorthand, a punchline .etc. They were meant to be used for teaching and if they were published they would be published with the name of the lecturer.)
"I'm not including any more. The ones named are our joint work.So, what about it?
For all of them, I ask for the co-authorship and for inclusion in a section in the collection itself
Under the title ( poems) or another title Lucie Ottová + Eva Hrubá.
Next, I will write you an open letter, where I will present these poems as a collaborative work created in the Literary Workshop under the guidance of the lecturer E.H. With the fact that I dedicate them to you. The letter will be published in the collection. That's the way it is, so please respect it. The authorship of the eventual book was already consulted at the time, and you said yourself that it would be a collaborative work. As long as we agree, it'll be okay. Hello Eva." After this crucial email, Lucie Ott went silent for good, and before considering her moral lapse, she did not even respond to phone calls. And two years later she published "her" first book in the Powerprint Prague publishing house. And there's the devil sprinkler!
Eva Hrubá feels, to put it very gently, cheated. She says:
"Not only is the collection Corset of the Soul published in spite of my warning, but most of the poems are stamped not by the influence of my work, but by a clear copying of style, words, ideas. The most egregious theft I discovered was in a slim book called IN THE CIRCLE OF THE MOMENT, where the poem Quiet to Quiet...is the stolen title of my theatrical performance (see poster photo). It is a" scrapbook "on coated paper of photographs accompanied by poems. (Photo by Richard Horak and poems by L.O,publisher not stated) , published in 2025, probably as a "samizdat" by two friends and is mainly further evidence of who Ott the poet is and how she borrows words, ideas and verse from other writers. Simply put..." concludes Hrubá, " I deny authorship of the entire collection with minimal exceptions. The idea that Lucie brought, a few verses or an unfinished poem was completed by someone else. And if I am very lenient, two authors!"
After the first incident of the same type with Lucie - it was about the creation of an author page with texts without any indication of cooperation - Eva Hrubá ended all contacts. But now she will have to resume them if she wants to seek legal justice. We will follow the case in the media.
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