THE LIFE OF this book began in October 2019, when the CLASP project (A Consolidated Library of Anglo-Saxon Poetry) hosted nine speakers at a workshop in Oxford, arranged by myself and Rafael Pascual. Our desire was to celebrate the rich tradition and vibrant innovation in the fields Old English (OE) and Anglo-Latin metre. Moreover, we wanted to make the field of OE metrical studies more accessible to a new generation of scholars, and to stimulate fresh research among those who might not have yet been attracted to considering metre in their work. This spirit of accessibility and pedagogy is central to the CLASP project, which will make a wealth of text and data freely available to the academic community and the interested public alike. Notably, in the context of the present volume, the project will provide metrical scansions of the OE and Anglo-Latin verse corpora, and a record of scribal and editorial emendations to the manuscript texts.

The book was largely compiled during the time of the coronavirus pandemic. Across a period of unprecedented distance and disconnect between colleagues, this volume has been a much-valued point of connection between us, the editors, and our contributors around the world. By publishing this as an open-access collection, funded by CLASP, we hope it will continue to bring people and ideas into contact with one another.

My personal thanks go to Jane Roberts, whose guidance following the examination of my PhD thesis contributed to my continuing enthusiasm for the study of metre, and ultimately to the conception of the workshop that initiated this volume. I would also like to thank Luisa Ostacchini and Eugenia Vorobeva for their editorial assistance.