BilboReadingWelcome 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.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.

Continue reading “The Great Hall of Poets”

THE HOBBIT - FAKE BOFA TITLEWell, that was a surprise.

Even following our spy report last week that Warner Bros. (via New Line) had registered a new title for its trilogy of Hobbit films, I thought it unlikely they actually would follow through and make a change.

Mostly because There And Back Again seemed too established as a name and it seemed a bit irrational to toss away all that brand recognition.

On the other hand, it’s almost inarguable those two words The Hobbit are the true key that deliver all that goodwill (in an accounting sense) toward the films. And Warner Bros, with nothing more than the announcement of a mid-stream title change, have just scored the film millions of dollars worth of free editorial. That’s gold for any marketer.

Continue reading “How There and Back Again became The Battle of the Five Armies. And why.”

A couple of weeks ago we revealed LOTRProject’s new interactive map of Middle-earth — complete with key dates, events and character movements for events of the Second Age and Third Age.

Now Emil Johannson has reached back into the events of the Elder Days of Middle-earth’s history, creating a similar interactive map that depicts the key events of the elves’ war against Morgoth on a map of Beleriand. Continue reading “Explore this great interactive map of lost Beleriand”

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.

DoSThorin01 Chairman Tobias M. Eckrich of the German Tolkien Society (Deutsche Tolkien Gesellschaft) recently chatted with Richard Armitage about his time on the Hobbit set. What he says about the Erebor interior scenes in the confrontation with Smaug being shot inside nothing but a great green box is interesting — one wonders whether a theatre background helps with the adjustment to such an absence of visual cues.

Don’t forget to follow the link at the bottom for the complete interview. You can find the English transcript immediately below the German translation.

Continue reading “Richard Armitage chats with the German Tolkien Society”

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.

Beowulf There’s a lot of excitement floating round academic communities for J.R.R. Tolkien’s forthcoming Beowulf translation (which you can pre-order here) where the prevailing buzz seems to be “best thing since slices bread”. Here, writer Mabel Slattery outlines why.

EDIT: There is an error of fact within the article. Michael Drout did not actually re-discover Tolkien’s Beowulf translation.

I did not “discover” the Beowulf translation, not even in the sense that I found it in the Bodleian Library. This claim is a conflation of a story about one manuscript with information about a totally different text.

The real story is not quite as exciting.

You can read Drout’s explanation in full here.

Don’t forget to click the link to read the full article. Continue reading “Why Tolkien’s Beowulf translation is one of the best things to happen to literature”

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.

bg_HGEYA It’s not all sparkles, party-time and un-ending barrels of Dorwinion wine in the underground halls of Thranduil’s stronghold.

In fact, if one delves a little into Unfinished Tales a number emerge why one should consider Thranduil quite a formidable ruler, especially in relation to some of his elven peers. Here are four of mine (you may have more).

Continue reading “Four reasons Thranduil is smarter than your average elf”

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.