Welcome to The Great Hall of Poets, our regular monthly feature showcasing the talent of Middle-earth fans. Each month we will feature a small selection of the poems submitted, but we hope you will read all of the poems that we have received here in our Great Hall of Poets.
So come and join us by the hearth and enjoy!
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.netOne poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
I’ve been re-reading The Children of Húrin lately in preparation for TORn’s chapter-by-chapter discussion in our chatroom. (We’re starting our discussion later today in The Hall of Fire. Feel free to join us at 6pm ET as we dive into Chapter 1.)
It’s been some years since I’ve read The Children of Húrin in full; I probably haven’t completed a cover-to-cover reading since the novel was first published in 2006. But it’s always interesting how revisiting a novel after a long period sometimes gives you a totally different perspective on the action.
So as I’m reading along, I’m going to try and briefly write about one new thing that strikes me each chapter.
Túrin and Sador; Turin and Brandir: a study in contrasts?
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
The mightiest and fairest of all the Elves that remained in Middle-earth – Galadriel.
Over 2000 votes were cast in our final event, and Galadriel took 66% of the vote – a significant victory.
We hope you enjoyed our unique twist on Middle-earth March Madness this year, and as always, we’d love to hear your comments and suggestions below. Do you have a unique way to run this event? Let us hear about it!
A note on how the bracket combatants were determined. TheOneRing.net created a document containing all combatants, sub divided into divisions. We asked staff to cast sixteen votes per division, with the votes having a weight of 1-4. Each staffer cast four 4 votes, four 3 votes, four 2 votes and four 1 votes in each division. We then totaled all the votes from each division to determine their rank, and ultimately placed those into our bracket for seeding.
Congrats to the Villanova Wildcats as they won the ‘real’ March Madness last night. But while that was possibly the most dramatic ending in college basketball history, it pales in comparison to our final of Middle-earth March Madness 2016!
(Drumroll…)
Galadriel vs. Morgoth
Could there be a more epic battle? Beauty and Brains facing the ultimate Baddie with Brawn.
Voting was close for the winners of the Beauty and Brains divisions. Galadriel pulled out of the victory over last year’s Champ by only 50 votes! Unfortunately for Beorn, the other match-up was not quite as close. Morgoth blew-out Beorn, garnering 60% of the votes.
So it all comes down to this. Will we have our first female character champion? Will an ultimate baddie win for the first time? Only time, and your votes, will tell!
Voting is now open below. Voting will remain open until tomorrow night (April 6) at 10pm ET.
Fans in Europe were able to buy The Story of Kullervo last year; the good news is, today the wait is over at last for fans in the US!
Tolkien himself said of this previously unknown work of fantasy that it was “the germ of my attempt to write legends of my own,” and was “a major matter in the legends of the First Age.” Publishers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt tell us:
‘Kullervo, son of Kalervo, is perhaps the darkest and most tragic of all J.R.R. Tolkien’s characters. “Hapless Kullervo,” as Tolkien called him, is a luckless orphan boy with supernatural powers and a tragic destiny.
Brought up in the homestead of the dark magician Untamo, who killed his father, kidnapped his mother, and tried three times to kill him when he was still a boy, Kullervo is alone save for the love of his twin sister, Wanona, and the magical powers of the black dog Musti, who guards him. When Kullervo is sold into slavery he swears revenge on the magician, but he will learn that even at the point of vengeance there is no escape from the cruelest of fates.
Tolkien’s Kullervo was the ancestor of Túrin Turambar, tragic hero of The Silmarillion. Published here for the first time with the author’s drafts, notes, and lecture essays on its source work, the Kalevala, The Story of Kullervo is a foundation stone in the structure of Tolkien’s invented world.’
While the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament may have set their final last night, we at TheOneRing.net are getting set for our Final Four match-ups!
The winner of the Beauty division, Galadriel, will take on the two-time champion from the Brains division, Gandalf. In the 2012 edition of Middle-earth March Madness, Gandalf defeated Galadriel in the Elite Eight round…can he do it in 2016? If Gandalf wins this year, he will be our first repeat champion and will lead the total championship count with three.
On the other side we have two first time Final Four combatants. Defeating Eowyn by just 9 votes, Beorn wins the Brawn division and moves on to face the ultimate Baddie – Morgoth! As an interesting side note, this is the first time Morgoth has made any type of run in Middle-earth March Madness. He has soundly defeated all combatants in this year’s event, but he is coming up against the top seed from the Brawn division in the form of Beorn. (Speaking of, which ‘form’ will Beorn take in this match-up? We’ll let you decide.) It’s an ultimate battle of two number 1 seeds…let’s see who wins!
Welcome to The Great Hall of Poets, our regular monthly feature showcasing the talent of Middle-earth fans. Each month we will feature a small selection of the poems submitted, but we hope you will read all of the poems that we have received here in our Great Hall of Poets.
I’ve been re-reading The Children of Húrin lately in preparation for TORn’s chapter-by-chapter discussion in our chatroom. (We’re starting our discussion later today in The Hall of Fire. Feel free to 
