Forgotten Ground Regained
Resources
A Field Guide to Alliterative Verse
- Part I, Getting Oriented
- Part II, The Lay of the Land
- Part III, Building Poetry with Phrases
- Part IV, Linking Half-Lines Together
- Part V, Rules for Alliteration
- Part VI, Rhythm: Lifts and Dips
- Part VII, What Makes a Strong Stress?
- Part VIII, Syllable Weight and Resolution
- Part IX, Secondary Stress; Strong and Weak Dips
- Part X, Alliterative Meters: Historical and Modern
- Part XI, Being like Beowulf: the Sievers Types
- Part XII, The Meter of Beowulf: Variants of the Five Types
- Part XIII, The Meter of Beowulf: A Framework
- Part XIV, A Prosodic Primer
- Part XV, Mimicking Old English Alliterative Verse
- Part XVI, Alliterative Meter versus Accentual Tetrameter
- Part XVII, Mimicking Middle English Alliterative Verse
- Part VIII, Conclusion
Notes from the Editor
Tolkien and Alliterative Verse
- Anna Smol's Website on Tolkien and Alliterative Verse
- The Prancing Pony Podcast (more general resource, but great fans of alliterative verse)
Essays and Articles
- Tolkien's Develoment as a Writer of Alliterative Verse by Tom Shippey
- A Tale of Two Essays: The Inklings on Alliterative Meter, by Dennis Wise
- The Theory and Practice of Alliterative Verse in the Work of J.R.R. Tolkien by Mark Hall
- J.R.R. Tolkien's "Homecoming" and Modern Alliterative Metre by Smol and Foster
- Eomer Gets Poetic: Tolkien's Alliterative Versecraft by James Shelton
- Music in Middle Earth by Gene Hargrove
- The Density of Alliterative Lines in Tolkien's Prose
- A Sudden Outcry: The Tolkien Estate and Fanworks
Articles
- A Tale of Two Essays: The Inklings on Alliterative Verse
- Carved in Granite: C.S. Lewis' Revivalism in The Nameless Isle
- Dating Sweet Desire: C.S. Lewis' Revivalism in The Nameless Isle
- Antiquarianism Underground: The Twentieth-century Alliterative Revival in American Genre Poetry
- Poul Anderson and the American Alliterative Revival
- Paul Edwin Zimmer's Alliterative Style
Others
- The Old Alliterative Verse Form as a Medium for Poetry by John D. Niles
- C.S. Lewis' article on "The Alliterative Metre"
- Poetic Form by Geoffrey Russom
- Alliterative Verse / Avante-Garde by Eric Weiskott
- Accentual Verse by Dana Gioia
- The Later Poetry of George Johnston by W. J. Keith
- Alliterative Verse/Avante Garde by Eric Weiskott
Bibliographies
More General Essays on Form and Meter
- Poetic Meter in English: Roots and Possibilities by Richard Moore
- Against Free Verse by Thomas Fleming
- The End of the Line for Modern Poetry by Tim Love
- Notes and Cogitations on the Line and Foot in Free Verse by Fred Beake
- What was Formalism? by Eliot Weinberger
The Natural Poetry of English
Originally published in Withowinde, journal of Ða Engliscan Gesiðas (The English Companions). and reprinted in Issue 2, Spring, 2024.Embedded recordings provided by M. Wendy Hennequin.
Guides for Poets
Overview Pages
- Wikipedia article on alliterative verse
- PDF of Wikipedia Article (as of 12/2/2023)
- Alliteration (from Words & Stuff)
Old English Alliterative Verse
- Why Anglo-Saxon Poetry? by Samuel J. Stephens
- Anglo-Saxon Alliterative Verse (from Arnaut and Karkur's ultimate online prosody resource)
- The Nuts and Bolts Guide to Writing Old English Style Poetry, by Martin Vine
- Old English Metre: A Brief Guide
- Building Blocks of Old English Poetry by Dr. Wendy Hennequin
- Old English Metrics (from Winlandes Scir)
Middle English Alliterative Verse
Norse and Icelandic alliterative verse
Irish and Welsh verse forms
- Ancient Irish Poetic Forms Packet (from Russell Gilman Hunt)