Forgotten Ground Regained: Introduction to Issue 5

ISSN 2996-6353

New Series Issue 5, Winter, 2025

 INTRODUCTION

The last few years have been a momentous period for modern English alliterative verse. Here are some highlights:

The publication of Dennis Wise’s Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival: A Critical Anthology (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2023) – a massive book, with more than 150 poems by 55 poets.
The publication of three novels-in-verse. One of them, Aaron Poochigian’s Mr. Either-Or: All the Rage (2021), alternates between heroic couplets and alliterative verse. Mary Thaler’s Ulfhildr (2023) is entirely alliterative in form. Zach Weinersmith’s Bea Wolf (2023), an alliterative verse graphic novel, provides a children’s-story riff on Beowulf and was a Hugo Award finalist.
The publication of two poetry collections consisting primarily of alliterative verse: Adam Bolivar’s A Wheel of Ravens (2023), and Lancelot Schaubert’s The Greenwood Poet (2023). A Wheel of Ravens was a nominee for the Science Fiction Poetry Society’s Elgin Prize.
The release of Jeffrey Leiser’s Freydis and Gudrid (2024), an alliterative verse opera, as a movie available on Amazon Prime.
The publication of The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien (2024), edited by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond. This book gives us a broad overview of Tolkien’s poetry, including his alliterative verse. Many of the poems it contains were previously available only to scholars.

This issue includes a review of Tolkien’s collected poems, by Dennis W. Wise, of Aaron Poochigian’s Mr. Either/Or: All the Rage by Michael Helsem, and Mary Thaler’s Ulfhildr, by Jamie Molaro. Links to other reviews of the works listed above are available in the “Publications Noted” section of this issue. The last 18 months also saw the rebirth of Forgotten Ground Regained, which I had not had time or energy to update in more than ten years. In the process of updating the site, I discovered hundreds of alliterative poets and poems, demonstrating the depth and richness of the modern alliterative revival. 

With this issue, Forgotten Ground Regained also passes an important milestone: It marks the beginning of the second year in which it is not just a website, but a quarterly journal of alliterative verse. This issue, like the four issues that preceded it, serves to highlight the flexibility and power of alliterative poetry in modern English.

This issue focuses on  images of the natural world. It includes both serious and light poems (for the latter, check out Jeff Sypeck’s “Inter-loper”, and Rachel Trousdale’s “The Woodchuck”. It includes not only Old English-style alliterative verse and Old Norse drottkvætt stanzas, but also a tail-stave meter poem by Steven Searcy, an alliterative haiku by K.F Hartless, an innovative monostich (single-line poem) form invented by Rose Novick, and alliterative free verse poems by Matthew Bullen, Michael Helsem, Siodhna McGowan, and Margaret Noodin. It also contains two Scots poems by Colin MacKenzie, and an Anishinaabemowin (Ojbwe) version of Margaret Noodin’s poem..

Judd Bemmels, a conservation biologist, gives us four poems about trees: “English Oak”, “Beech”, “Silver Fir”, and “Norway Spruce”, setting them as characters in a Northern, British/Nordic world, while Matthew Dickerson’s “Kenning the Cobble” and “The Last Leaf that Clings” set trees as part of a larger landscape, liminal between the domestic and the wild. Danny Fitzpatrick’s “Fox”, Helsem’s “Under the Eye”, Margaret Noodin’s “What the Peepers Say”, Jeff Sypeck’s “Interloper”, and Rachel Trousdale’s “The Woodchuck” give us encounters with unexpected and the wild things of the animal world. Chase Ryan Moniz’ “Winter Window” and K.F. Hartless’s “Alliterative Haiku” give us a window into the seasons.

Then there are the bird poems. A lot of bird poems! I would be remiss not to start with Maryann Corbett’s “The Birds of Ancient Battlefields Visit the Suburbs”, but there are many more: Matthew Bullen’s “Serenity Falls Up”, Pam Clements’ “White Owl Irruption”, Matthew Dickerson’s “Cardinal at the Feeder in Winter”, Fiona Richardson’s “Sparrow”, “White Tailed Eagle”, and “Red Kite”, Lancelot Schaubert’s “Cormorant Upon the Styx”, and Steven Searcy’s “Emblem”.

Finally, we see images of broader landscapes in Colin Mackenzie’s “The Brough o Birsay” and “Tynin a Wellie” and in Michael Smith’s article, “The Modern Landscape of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and J. Simon Harris’ article and translation excerpt, “The Cycle of the Seasons in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Enjoy!