The Estate of Dannie Abse
Poet / Writer
Books
Dannie Abse was, and still is, one of Britain's most well-respected poets. He was born in 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 by Penguin in 1948. Other poetry collections include Selected Poems (1970), winner of an Arts Council of Wales Literature Award; Pythagoras (1979); Way Out in the Centre (1981); Ask the Bloody Horse (1986); and Running Late (2006), for which he was awarded the Roland Mathias prize. Judge Glyn Mathias wrote that the volume contained “wonderful evocations of atmosphere, regret, longing for the simple, familiar things—and anticipation of it all passing. Every poem has something—some phrasing, some image that gives the reader that tremor of sudden recognition.”
Abse continued to combine his careers as both a doctor and writer, aspects of his life that, together with his Jewish background and Welsh nationality, are integral themes in his poetry and prose. The title of his collected poems, White Coat, Purple Coat (1989), refers to his lifelong professions of physician and poet. Of these careers, Abse has stated, “I like to think I’m a poet and Medicine my serious hobby.”
He 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). His final book of memoir, The Presence (2007), is a celebratory portrait of his 50-year marriage. It won the Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year Award in 2008.
In addition to being a poet and memoirist, he was a successful essayist, playwright, and novelist. Abse was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Fellow of the Welsh Academy of Letters, Honorary Fellow at the University of Wales College of Medicine, and recipient of the Cholmondeley Award. He died on 28 September 2014, six days after his 91st birthday.
Forthcoming publication:
A selection of Dannie Abse's key texts have recently been acquired and will be published as a collection, with new introductions by Welsh writers, in 2025.
Fiction
| Publication Details | Notes |
|---|---|
2006 Parthian | 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 |
|---|---|
2009 Seren | 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. |
2007 Hutchinson | Several months after the death of his wife, Joan, in a car accident, Dannie Abse 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. |
Poetry
| Publication Details | Notes |
|---|---|
2014 | A complete anthology spanning from 1948-2015, Dannie Abse collects together here the definitive jewels of his canon. |
2013 Hutchinson | At the autobiographical heart of this extraordinary collection, published in Dannie Abse's ninetieth year, is a particular vision of human possibilities, a delight in things seen and achieved and an awareness of the transience of it all. |
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 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. These poems reflect its truth, and in the process transfigure ordinary life and love into something rich and strange. |
2009 Hutchinson | The year 2009 marked the 60th anniversary of the publication of Dannie Abse’s first poetry collection, After Every Green Thing. To mark this milestone he compiled a new and definitive volume of selected poems which includes new work combining both passion and maturity. |
2008 Seren Books | Welsh Retrospective is a selection of poems about his native Wales. 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. |