While Tolkien was widely read, his primary interests—both professionally and in terms of his own aesthetic preferences—lay in the traditions of northern Europe, especially the Germanic traditions. Many of these cultures used alliteration (as well as a complex metrical system) as the dominant feature of their poetry. This included the Anglo-Saxons of England. After the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, poetic traditions began to shift to favor rhymed poems with the bouncing meters that we often think of as English-language poetry today. Yet there were some holdouts, and some scholars see these late English alliterative poems as a potential political statement, holding fast to the original English Germanic culture over the invading French traditions. Tolkien, as we know, once sought likewise to capture that same misty past as his "mythology for England": what we today know as Middle-earth.

It is no surprise, then, that Tolkien also enjoyed alliterative poetry. Some of his favorite poems—Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight—were alliterative. He translated alliterative poems and wrote original alliterative verse. Fanworks creators following in Tolkien's tradition have followed suit, crafting alliterative poems about the legendarium.

This month, as part of our Themed Collection series, Paul D. Deane has assembled a collection of alliterative poems about Tolkien's world. Paul is the editor of Forgotten Ground Regained, the definitive source of Modern English alliterative poetry online, which publishes a quarterly journal of alliterative verse. (Poets, take note—they take submissions!) The site includes a substantial section on poems based on science fiction and fantasy, including Tolkien. Paul was kind enough to select ten legendarium-inspired poems to introduce readers to alliterative verse based on Tolkien. As always, we want to hear your favorites as a comment on the collection.

You can check out Paul's collection, "Alliterative Verse for Arda," here.

Paul's is the second of our new Themed Collections column. (If you missed Himring's collection on the ruling queens of Númenor, find it here!) We are looking for other collections of fanworks and other content related to Tolkien. These curated collections can be as ridiculously broad or as ridiculously specific as you would like. (Something less ridiculous and in the middle is welcome too, of course.) Characters, character groups, pairings, genres, formats, tropes, themes, ages, events, and a thousand approaches we haven't even thought of—if you'd like to put together a themed collection, find the call for contributors here.

Finally, we had big news last week that we will be hosting a hybrid event on July 19, 2025 to celebrate our twentieth birthday. We will gather for a day (with optional social events on either side for those who can attend in person) to share research and scholarship about Tolkien and fanworks that address similar topics. Mark your calendar! If you'd like to volunteer to help make this event happen, reply to this email.