Poem in October — Key Facts
General
- Author★
- Dylan Thomas (1914–1953), Welsh poet.
Dates
- Year written★
- 1944; Thomas composed the poem on or around his thirtieth birthday, 27 October 1944.
- First publication
- First published in 1945 in the literary magazine Horizon, then collected in Deaths and Entrances (1946).
- Collection publication date
- Deaths and Entrances, published 1946 by J. M. Dent, London.
Locations
- Setting
- Laugharne (or possibly Swansea), Wales — a coastal Welsh town with a harbour, hills, woods, and a nearby church, reflecting Thomas's Welsh landscape.
- Key geographical features
- The poem moves from a harbour and sleeping town, through farmland and woods, up to a hilltop overlooking the sea, church, and distant castles.
People
- Biographical occasion
- Thomas wrote the poem to mark his own thirtieth birthday (27 October 1944), making it an autobiographical birthday ode.
- Childhood figure
- The poet's mother appears implicitly in the childhood memory sequence; the boy walks with her through summer mornings, anchoring the nostalgia of the poem.
Structure
- Poetic form★
- Seven stanzas of ten lines each, with a loose syllabic count (approximately nine syllables per line) and an irregular but recurring rhyme scheme.
- Metre and sound
- Syllabic verse rather than strict accentual-syllabic metre; rich in assonance, alliteration, and internal rhyme characteristic of Thomas's style.
- Narrative perspective
- First-person lyric speaker, clearly autobiographical; the 'I' is Thomas himself on his thirtieth birthday.
Themes
- Time and mortality★
- Nature and spiritual renewal
- Childhood and memory
- Hope and continuity