fadesintothewest

Thank you for your engagement with this community during the past month!

Here is the tolkienshortfanworks challenge for August.

For the thematic challenge, I have decided to re-use some verse prompts that I had compiled from Tolkien's Collected Poems (especially from the earlier verse) for a Silmarillion Writers Guild bingo challenge last winter. I was reminded of this, as I recently had reason to revisit the Collected Poems as subject. I am copying them here in the original bingo format, but it is fine to ignore that, unless anyone is interested in doing a bingo. Just pick one or more, if you like.

B1 - gloomy hush of night
B2 - a messenger, a mariner
B3 - the Ship of the Moon
B4 - of bellying sails
B5 - tossing draperies

I1 - the hills are old
I2 - a song for the ease of pain
I3 - where the shadow flows
I4 - swinging constellations bright
I5 - the blue-spun twilit hours

N1 - kneeling without light
N2 - porridge for his provender
N3 - FREE SPACE
N4 - daffodils among the ordered trees
N5 - in a steam of gold

G1 - wealth of down and dales
G2 - by weir and murmuring fall
G3 - it whistled bitter-cold
G4 - beyond the great sea-shadows
G5 - white, hot and soundless

O1 - the winds have waned
O2 - full of wandering beams of light
O3 - my white and windy tower
O4 - night is quiet and sleep is rest
O5 - a tardy tribute

The formal challenge is to write a Ten by Ten poem or another ten-line poem.
A Ten by Ten poem contains ten lines of ten syllables each.
This blog has a whole list of different types of ten-line poems, with explanations and examples:
https://darksideofthemoon583.com/poetry-challenges-tutorials/decastich-poetry-challenge/
The Ten by Ten is no. 33.
It is not required that your ten-line poem follow any of the models in the list.
It's just an invitation to experiment, if you feel like it.

Usual reminder that in order to post the fill to this community or to the related collection on AO3 (linked in a sticky post at the top), the fanwork can only have a word count up to 1000 words and must be linked to a Tolkien fandom.
Rec lists and podfics can be posted as fills for thematic prompts, as long as the fanworks concerned meet those conditions.

Also we continue to welcome other pieces unrelated to any challenge, of course, including cross-posts and older stories, as long as they meet the criteria!