Daniel AbseCBEFRSL (22 September 1923 – 28 September 2014) was a Welsh poet and physician.[1] His poetry won him many awards. As a medic, he worked in a chest clinic for over 30 years.
Abse was a passionate supporter of Cardiff City football club. He first went to watch them play in 1934 and many of his writings refer to his experiences watching and lifelong love of the team known as "The Bluebirds".[citation needed]
Career as poetedit
Although best known as a poet, Abse worked in the medical field, and was a physician in a chest clinic for over thirty years.[2] He received numerous literary awards and fellowships for his writing. In 1989, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Wales.[citation needed]
His first volume of poetry, After Every Green Thing, was published in 1949.[3] His autobiographic work, Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve, was published in 1954. He won the Welsh Arts Council Award in both 1971 and 1987, and the Cholmondeley Award in 1985. He was a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature from 1983. In a foreword to Collected Poems 1948–1976, Abse noted that his poems are increasingly "rooted in actual experience," both domestic and professional, and many display a reconciliation between Jewish and Welsh themes and traditions.[4]
Abse lived for several decades in the north-west area of London, mainly near Hampstead, where he had considerable ties. For several years he wrote a column for the local Hampstead and Highgate Express. These articles subsequently appeared in book form.[citation needed]
In 2005, his wife Joan was killed in a car accident, while Abse suffered a broken rib. His poetry collection, Running Late, was published in 2006, and The Presence, a memoir of the year after his wife died, was published in 2007; it won the 2008 Wales Book of the Year award.[3] The book was later dramatised for BBC Radio 4. He was awarded the Roland Mathias prize for Running Late.[5]
— (1967). Three Questor Plays. Lowestoft Suffolk: Scorpion Press. ISBN 9780851030104. – includes House of Cowards, Gone and In the Cage[8]
— (1990). The view from Row G: three plays. Bridgend: Seren. ISBN 1854110225. – includes House of Cowards, The Dogs of Pavlov and Pythagoras (Smith)[9]
^Kerbel, Sorrel (2004). "Abse, Dannie". The Routledge Encyclopedia of Jewish Writers of the Twentieth Century. Routledge. pp. 43–45. ISBN 978-1-135-45607-8.
^Sicher, Efraim (1 February 2012). Beyond Marginality: Anglo-Jewish Literature After the Holocaust. SUNY Press. p. 213. ISBN 978-1-4384-1994-7.
^"The View from Row G". Seren Books. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
^Riggs, Thomas (2001). Contemporary Poets (Seventh ed.). St. James Press. p. 1. ISBN 1558623493.
Further readingedit
Curtis, Tony (1985). Dannie Abse. Writers of Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. ISBN 9780708308967.
External linksedit
Wikiquote has quotations related to Dannie Abse.
"Dannie Abse". Official website. Archived from the original on 10 August 2019.
Goldbeck-Wood, Sandy (13 December 2014). "Dannie Abse – Last act in the theatre of disease" (PDF). British Medical Journal: 25.
Annotations at NYU Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database of several Abse works, with links to texts and audio of the poet reading poems " Carnal Knowledge", "Case History", "The Origin of Music", "Pathology of Colours", "The Stethoscope".