Discovering Tolkienists in all the oddest places

So, the last two months of quarantine were spent writing two essays on modern alliterative poetry in English -- one on Poul Anderson, another on the fandom and genre writers who found in Anderson (and Tolkien to a lesser extent) an example and model. The second essay, especially, was an odd one for me. It involved a lot of emailing random people, especially folks in the Society for Creative Anachronism, on whatever they might have known.** Anyway, I managed to find some really enthusiastic, friendly members who were founts of knowledge. One was Beth Morris Tanner, who co-wrote a booklet for The Compleat Anachronist series on pre-modern verse forms. Another was Sandra Straubhaar, someone previously unknown to me but (I realize now) has been long involved in Tolkien studies, including several entries for the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia edited by Michael D. C. Drout.

 Sandra also helped me with a really tough question. The SCA customarily uses medieval personas, and I couldn't discover the real name of "Anne of Briar Ditch," who wrote a fun alliterative poem in the 1970s for Tournaments Illuminated. Well, turns out that "Anne" was a Tolkienist herself -- specifically, Anne Etkin, who edited a book in 1978 called Eglerio! In Praise of Tolkien. Of course, now when I google Anne's Society name, she comes up instantly, so don't know why I couldn't find it before. But at least that's one mystery solved.

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** Discovering that the SCA is totally awash in original examples of alliterative verse was probably my biggest and most pleasant surprise.

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