My band, Round the House, is about to record a new CD and one of the songs we are doing uses the words from a poem by deceased poet, Katherine Tynan. The words are placed to an original melody,which is a variation of a traditional tune, played in the breaks. It was a really cool project to take a tune we love "Old Copper Plate", and create a song melody to go within it, instead of finding the tune to match an existing song.

My problem is that I am not sure if I need to get permission to use the poem as lyrics now that we are recording it. Does anyone have experience with this type of thing. The poet is deceased and I have no idea who I might contact about using it... or if that is even necessary. I am not sure exactly when the poem was written, but it was likely in the early 1900s.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
Claire