I was introduced to J. R. R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings trilogy by a girl I befriended in my first year at grammar school. I was eleven years old, I’d passed the eleven-plus exam, one of a handful of girls from my South London junior school, and now I was regularly lost in corridors, trying to find a classroom or science lab. I was glad to make friends with a small group of three other girls and we could find our way together. Our favourite place was the library. It was huge, with tall windows, oil paintings, high shelves full of books and plenty of corners where we could hide and read in the winter, rather than facing the chilly grounds. It was in the summer that we discovered Middle-earth: while other girls were playing netball and tennis, we were reading aloud to each other under shady trees or among the rose bushes, turning Tolkien’s poems into songs, speaking in fairy tongues and learning to write in runes.
imagination
bound together in fiction
lost in Middle-earth
© Kim M. Russell, 2016
A recently discovered map of Middle-earth annotated by J. R. R. Tolkien
Tolkien annotated map of Middle-earth acquired by Bodleian library | Books | The Guardian www.theguardian.com
My response to Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Heeding Haiku With Chèvrefeuille, October 26th 2016
This week Chèvrefeuille has challenged us to write a haibun inspired by a book we have read. We can choose whatever we want but the haibun must have a maximum of 250 words (including the haiku or tanka).
writing in north norfolk 
I read them all a loud to my sons.
While you were lost in middle earth, I was doing this: College drop out; flunked middle class, which is a six word memoir poem, fashioned after Hemingway’s “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
I love the junction of friction and imagination set in Middle Earth.
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Thanks for reading and for your comments, Colleen. Did you and your sons get lost too?
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This is just perfect!
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Thank you, Mama Zen!
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Glorious! Fabulous!
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😎
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Dreaming, inspiring and just beautiful!
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Thank you!
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Just watched the LOTR movies and reread the books for probably the 40th time. They remain my all time favorites.
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🙂
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while other girls were playing netball and tennis,
we were reading aloud to each other under shady trees
So wonderful to have been blessed with companions with like interests. It certainly was something meaningful for the future1
Hank
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I’m still friends with two of them after all these years!
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I have also read Tolkien’s books and find great interest in them. I find Tolkien’s Middle-Earth very fascinating and sad that he isn’t still around to write more books. Although he does have a book coming out next year that I will be waiting for.
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I plan to read them all again as soon as I’ve finished the pile of books that are waiting patiently for me. Thank you for reading and commenting!
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