Friday Poem – ‘September’s Child’ by Dai George

~ Seren Books

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘September’s Child’ by Dai George from his new collection Karaoke King which was published this week.

The cover of Karaoke King shows a drawing of a teenage boy, with short dark hair wearing a yellow and brown stripped vest over a white shirt. His head is to one side and his glasses are wonky. He wears a crumpled, gold crown. The title is on a yellow-gold box at the bottom.

Dai George’s confident second collection Karaoke King, addresses the contentious nature of the times. Always deeply thoughtful but also alternately ebullient, angry, curious, ashamed, the poet moves through urban and digital spaces feeling both uneasy and exhilarated. As with the Auden of the inter-war period, there is a feeling of history shifting, as a younger generation confronts its ethical obligations, its sense of complicity and disappointment. Ecological crisis hovers in the background, glimpsed in the ‘Fooled Evening’ of a world whose seasonal rhythms have fallen out of joint. Karaoke King also contains numerous reflections on popular culture, culminating in ‘A History of Jamaican Music’, a sequence at the heart of the volume speaking to urgent contemporary questions of ownership and privilege, pain and celebration. 

September’s Child Hormonally it ripens, tickling the blood, building through the part of me that would be womb, a premonition of loss or change, an over-fattened moon. Saccharine and festive, it makes of me a boy in bed failing to sleep on his birthday eve. Still I find myself September’s child, bookish, mild, ever eldest in the year, a connoisseur of subtle treats, like ravioli from the tin, the adult jokes in Asterix, or better yet a malady that softly lowers you to the settee but doesn’t stop your eyes from lapping at a page. Every year, sure as morning bell, I’d feel the bulge descend upon my tonsil gland, as now I feel the blossoming of an earthier and urgent need, a waft of chestnut smoke at summer’s end. I don’t know what it is, I only know it comes in August with a sky of schoolsweater grey and declining light. My pinky custard shivers, barely set within its rabbit mould. Sometimes it only takes a bar of Charles Trenet unwinding through ‘La Mer’ and I’m awash. A salt of yearning rises to my throat. Everywhere I look the children are younger, or else I’m fatter and forgetful, still stumbling on the brink of coming into something long deserved.

Karaoke King is available on the Seren website: £9.99

Create your free Seren account and enjoy 20% off every book you buy from us.

One thought on “Friday Poem – ‘September’s Child’ by Dai George”

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.