Can bards write poems? Not songs, but poems? If they can't, then you can ignore what's below.

Is there anyway to prevent people from stealing poems and selling it/claiming it as their own in RL?

------------------------------------

Sure! Bards can submit whatever "work" they want in terms of bardnotes or lyceum entries. Strictly speaking any "song" submitted is just a poem, since we are a text mud. Whether something is a poem or a song just depends on how you roleplay it. Bards have also submitted "paintings", "sculptures", plays, manifestos, etc.

As for people stealing your poems? Nothing will prevent people from doing that, though you'd have to think pretty highly of your talents to think someone would bother to A) try and then B) make a profit by doing so.

However, this is a potential problem anytime you share writing anywhere. Unless you intend to keep all your writing cloistered on your harddrive somewhere, it's a possibility. However, creative writing is meant to be shared. :) And honestly, most people who are interested in being recognized for writing are interested in being legitimately recognized for their own accomplishments, not someone else's.

If you want to stop people using your work in real life, you could always copyright it in real life.

Also, depending how widely you spread the poems, there is every chance that they'll appear in people's logs, allowing you to demonstrate that you'd created them by date X, which doesn't prove you wrote them, but would help, I suppose.