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Dannie Abse Genres | Bibliography | Prizes and awards | Critical perspective
Printer-friendly version Biography 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 Senior Fellow of the Humanities at Princeton University (1973-4), and President of the Poetry Society (1978-92). He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1983, Fellow of the Welsh Academy of Letters in 1992 (President 1995-), Honorary Fellow at the University of Wales College of Medicine (1999), and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Universities of Wales (1989) and Glamorgan (1997). He was given a Cholmondeley Award in 1985.
His poetry collections include Selected Poems (1970), winner of a Welsh Arts Council Literature Award; Pythagoras (1979); Way Out in the Centre (1981); Ask the Bloody Horse (1986); and White Coat, Purple Coat: Collected Poems 1948-1988 (1989). He has also published fiction, including Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve (1954) and O. Jones, O. Jones (1970), as well as non-fiction and plays, and he has edited many poetry anthologies. Goodbye, Twentieth Century: An Autobiography (2001), includes and updates his first volume of autobiography, A Poet in the Family (1974). His most recent book is The Strange Case of Dr Simmonds & Dr Glas (2002), a novel set in 1950s London.
Dannie Abse is married to the art historian Joan Mercer, with whom he has edited two books, Voices in the Gallery: Poems and Pictures (1986) and The Music Lover's Literary Companion (1988). He lives in Glamorgan, South Wales. Top of page Genres (in alphabetical order) Autobiography, Drama, Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry Top of page Bibliography After Every Green Thing Hutchinson, 1948
Walking Under Water Hutchinson, 1952
Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve Hutchinson, 1954
Fire in Heaven Hutchinson, 1956
Some Corner of an English Field Hutchinson, 1956
Mavericks: An Anthology (editor with Howard Sergeant) Editions Poetry and Poverty, 1957
Tenants of the House: Poems 1951-1956 Hutchinson, 1957
Poems, Golders Green Hutchinson, 1962
Poems! Dannie Abse: A Selection Vista, 1963
Modern European Verse (editor) Vista, 1964
Medicine on Trial Aldus, 1967
Three Questor Plays Scorpion, 1967
A Small Desperation Hutchinson, 1968
Demo Sceptre Press, 1969
O. Jones, O. Jones Hutchinson, 1970
Selected Poems Hutchinson, 1970
Modern Poets in Focus 1 (editor) Corgi, 1971
Modern Poets in Focus 3 (editor) Corgi, 1971
Thirteen Poets (editor) Poetry Book Society, 1972
Funland and Other Poems Hutchinson, 1973
Modern Poets in Focus 5 (editor) Corgi, 1973
The Dogs of Pavlov Vallantine, M., 1973
A Poet in the Family Hutchinson, 1974
Penguin Modern Poets 26 (Dannie Abse, D. J. Enright and Michael Longley) Penguin, 1975
Collected Poems 1948-1976 Hutchinson, 1977
More Words BBC, 1977
My Medical School Robson, 1978
Pythagoras Hutchinson, 1979
Way Out in the Centre Hutchinson, 1981
A Strong Dose of Myself Hutchinson, 1983
Doctors and Patients (editor) Oxford University Press, 1984
Ask the Bloody Horse Hutchinson, 1986
Journals From the Ant Heap Hutchinson, 1986
Voices in the Gallery: Poems and Pictures (editor with Joan Abse) Tate Gallery, 1986
The Music Lover's Literary Companion (editor with Joan Abse) Robson, 1988
The Hutchinson Book of Post-War British Poetry (editor) Hutchinson, 1989
White Coat, Purple Coat: Collected Poems 1948-1988 Hutchinson, 1989
People (contributor) National Language Unit of Wales, 1990
Remembrance of Crimes Past: Poems 1986-1989 Hutchinson, 1990
The View from Row G: Three Plays Seren, 1990
There Was A Young Man From Cardiff Hutchinson, 1991
Intermittent Journals Seren, 1994
On the Evening Road Hutchinson, 1994
Selected Poems Penguin, 1994
The Gregory Anthology 1991-1993 (editor with A. Stevenson) Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994
Twentieth-Century Anglo-Welsh Poetry (editor) Seren, 1997
Welsh Retrospective Seren, 1997
Arcadia, One Mile Hutchinson, 1998
Encounters Hearing Eye, 2001
Goodbye, Twentieth Century: An Autobiography Pimlico, 2001
Top of page Prizes and awards 1960 Charles Henry Foyle House of Cowards (play)
1970 Jewish Chronicle Book Award Selected Poems
1970 Welsh Arts Council Literature Award Selected Poems
1979 Welsh Arts Council Literature Award Pythagoras
1985 Cholmondeley Award
Top of page Critical Perspective Although Dannie Abse began in the 1950s as a poet disenchanted with the Movement orthodoxies then prevalent, and influenced by the example of Dylan Thomas, in the end his large body of work, in its rational clarity, is closer to Movement virtues than to Thomas's dithyrambics. He is warmer, more human than the Movement poets, though. His lifetime's work as a doctor has given him a grounding in human frailty and reality that many poets lack. Jewish matters often inform his poems and he sometimes uses Biblical parable or folk tale or at least their cadences, as in the early poem 'Song for Dov Shamir':
'Praying is another way of singing.
You plant in the tree the soul of lemons.
You plant in the gardens the spirit of roses.'
Wales, his life as a doctor, suburban life in north London - all come under his ruminative gaze. He likes to contrast the mores of Soho where he worked with Golders Green where he lives:
'It's a nice clean, quiet, religious place.
For my part, now and then, I want to scream:
Thus, by my neighbours, am considered odd.
...
It's a nice, loud, dirty, irreligious place.
For my part, now and then, I want to scream:
Thus, by Soho friends, am considered odd.'
('Odd')
His work as a doctor specialising in chest ailments informs both poems about direct medical experiences and about science generally. His attitude could be summed up as: science is good but is not to be trusted; art is good but is not to be trusted. In 'The Pathology of Colours' he says:
'I know the colour rose, and it is lovely,
But not when it ripens in a tumour.'
He makes an emblem of the white coat for the scientist/doctor and the purple coat for the poet. This concept is so important for him that, besides furnishing a poem, 'White Coat, Purple Coat', is the title of his Collected Poems White Coat, Purple Coat: Collected Poems 1948-1989 (1989): 'but in the white a man will freeze / and in the purple burn' ('Son of Pythagoras').'
But the benefits of medicine and intellectual elan of science are not scorned:
'Today, an x-ray on this oblong light
Clear that was not clear. No pneumothorax,
No deforming thoracoplasty. No flaw.
The patient nods, accepts it as his right.'
('Tuberculosis')
In 'Letter to Alex Comfort' he celebrates the bold pioneers of science and medicine, from Archimedes to Koch and Ehrlich:
'That Greek one, then, is my hero who watched the bath water
Rise above his navel, and rushed out naked, 'I found it,
I found it' into the street in all his shining and forgot
That others would only stare at his genitals.
What laughter!'
('Letter to Alex Comfort')
Dannie Abse's White Coat, Purple Coat: Collected Poems 1948-1989 were published in 1989, since when there have been two new collections, Remembrance of Crimes Past (1990) and On the Evening Road (1994).
Over time his preoccupations with Jewish matters has increased. Remembrance of Crimes Past has 'White Balloon - 'Dear Love, Auschwitz made me / more of a Jew than Moses ever did...' - and On the Evening Road has a poem cleverly exploring the two poles of the Jewish story through the medium 'Of Two Languages':
'Say now in Yiddish:
"Exile, Pogrom, Wanderer. Holocaust".
Say now in Hebrew:
"Blessed Art Thou O Lord".' Author photograph: © Elsa Corbluth Top of page
Welsh poet Dannie Abse (81) and his wife Joan (78) were involved in a car crash while driving from Golders Green to their holiday home in Ogmore-by-Sea, South Wales.  Mrs. Abse died instantly; Mr Abse suffered a broken rib.  The driver of the other vehicle was unhurt. The couple was returning from a poetry reading that they both had given.

Dannie Abse is an esteemed Jewish writer who lives in Glamorgan, South Wales. Joan Abse, his wife, was an art historian and writer. Dannie Abse is well-known for being a poet and a medical doctor. Abse, in fact, was a specialist at a chest clinic for over thirty years. But Abse is best known for his writings and has received numerous literary awards and fellowships. In 1989, he received an honorary doctorate from the Universities of Wales. 

The couple worked together editing two books in the 1980s.

Joan Abse leaves behind her husband, a son, and two daughters.