What was J.R.R. Tolkien’s first published poem, according to his bibliography?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s first published poem was The Battle of the Eastern Field.

The poem appeared in 1911 in the school magazine of King Edward’s School in Birmingham, where Tolkien was a pupil. It predates his major Middle-earth publications by decades and shows that verse was already part of his literary life before The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien’s early poetry often combined traditional forms, imaginative settings, and playful language. His later work as a philologist gave him an unusually close awareness of sound, meter, word history, and the relationship between language and story. Those interests became central to his invented languages and legends.

The poem is easy to confuse with better-known early works. Goblin Feet was published later, in 1915, while The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is a much later collection first published in 1962. The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late also belongs to Tolkien’s later published verse, not his first appearance in print.