Client details
Dr Dannie Abse
Agent
| Robert Kirby |
About
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|---|---|
Poet Dannie Abse was born on 22 September 1923 in Cardiff to Jewish parents. He studied Medicine in Wales and at King's College, London, qualifying as a doctor in 1950. His first collection of poetry, After Every Green Thing, was published in 1948, and he has continued to combine his careers as both a doctor (he was a specialist at the Central Medical Establishment chest clinic between 1954 and 1989) and writer, aspects of his life that, together with his Jewish background and Welsh nationality, are integral themes in his poetry. Dannie Abse was married to the late Joan Mercer, art historian, with whom he edited two books, Voices in the Gallery: Poems and Pictures (1986) and The Music Lover's Literary Companion (1988). Dannie Abse's latest work is TWO FOR JOY a celebratory collection of love poems.
| http://www.dannieabse.com http://www.contemporarywriters.com |
Gallery
Two for Joy: Scenes from Married Life 
The Music Lover's Literary Companion 
Dannie Abse: A Source Book 
New Selected Poems: Anniversary Collection 1949-2009 
The Presence 
The Yellow Bird 
Twentieth Century Anglo-Welsh Poetry 
Ash on A Young Man's Sleeve 
Be Seated, Thou 
The Strange Case of Dr Simmonds and Dr Glas 
Running Late 
Welsh Retrospective 
The Two Roads Taken 
100 Poems of Love and Lust 
The Presence 
There Was a Young Man from Cardiff 
Goodbye Twentieth Centry: An Autobiography
Fiction
| Publication Details | Notes |
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| ASH ON A YOUNG MAN'S SLEEVE 2006 Parthian | Widely acclaimed for its warm humour, lyricism and honesty, as well as its accurate evocation of the thirties, Ash on a Young Mans Sleeve has become a sought-after classic. In this delightful autobiographical novel, Dannie Abse skilfully interweaves public and private themes, setting the fortunes of a Jewish family in Wales against the troubled backcloth of the times- unemployment, the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, and the Spanish Civil War. |
Non-Fiction
| Publication Details | Notes |
|---|---|
| THE MUSIC LOVER'S LITERARY COMPANION 2009 JR Books | The Music Lover's Literary Companion contains much of the best imaginative writing about music and musicians by authors present and past. Here, among much else, can be found vivid autobiographical writings by Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Shaw and many others, and hilariously funny account of a night at the opera by Bernard Levin, caustic comments by Tolstoy and Carlisle, Philip Larkin's charming description of his early attachment to jazz and Alred Brendel's confessions of his anxiety about the pianos that wait for him in a hundred concert halls. A feast of memorable poetry and fiction are included too. |
| DANNIE ABSE: A SOURCE BOOK 2009 Seren | Dannie Abse, whose career as a poet spans sixty years, has made a huge contribution to the literature and literary life of Wales and to poetry and prose in the English Language. The Sourcebook is an essential companion to the poetry, prose, drama and critical writings of this major poet. Cary Archard has edited and written about Abse's work for over twenty years and collects here a marvellous representative selection of Abse's own writings, together with criticism of his work, which illuminates Abse's achievements for both students and general readers. * Biographical and critical introduction * Selection of Abse's criticism, autobiography and fiction * Interviews * Reviews of Abse's poetry over sixty years * Critical essays of Abse's poetry, some newly commissioned * Bibliography |
| THE PRESENCE 2007 Hutchinson | Several months after the death of poet Dannie Abse's wife, Joan, in a car accident, he began to write a diary which is both a record of present grief and a portrait of a marriage which lasted more than fifty years. It is an extraordinary document, painful but celebratory, funny yet often tragic, bursting with joy as well as sorrow and full of a deep understanding of what it means to be human. 'A remarkable and tender document' Sunday Times 'Supple, poignant and entirely real' Maggie Gee, Independent |
Poetry
| Publication Details | Notes |
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| TWO FOR JOY 2010 Hutchinson | Dannie and Joan Abse had been married for more than fifty years when she was killed in a car crash in 2005. After her death he wrote his extraordinary memoir of loss, "The Presence", which was the Wales Book of the Year in 2008. In contrast, much of this new collection is a delightful celebration. In it Dannie Abse returns to their marriage through all its seasons, and celebrates love in verse which is funny, tender and playful as well as serious and passionate. Almost half the poems appear in this form for the first time. 'One for sorrow, two for joy' is the old country saw about the magpie. These poems reflect its truth, and in the process transfigure ordinary life and love into something rich and strange. |
| NEW SELECTED POEMS 2009 Hutchinson | The year 2009 marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of Dannie Abse’s first poetry collection, After Every Green Thing, and since that time he has published an astonishing range of books, including poetry, fiction, criticism and autobiography. He remains a writer of great distinction who is at the height of his powers – his memoir, The Presence, won the Wales Book of the Year in 2008. But it is as a poet that Dannie Abse is best known, and to mark this extraordinary milestone he has compiled a new and definitive volume of selected poems which includes new work combining both passion and maturity. |
| WELSH RETROSPECTIVE 2008 Seren Books | Welsh Retrospective is a selection of poems about his native Wales by one of Britain's most popular poets. In this revealing book he writes movingly about the Cardiff of his childhood, home to his beloved Bluebirds football team, and also about the small village of Ogmore-by-Sea, location of early holidays and for many years his home in Wales. |
