Daniel Abse CBE FRSL (22 September 1923 – 28 September 2014) was a Welsh poet and physician. His poetry won him many awards. As a medic, he worked in a chest clinic for over 30 years.

Early years

Abse was born in Cardiff, Wales, as the younger brother of the politician and reformer Leo Abse and the eminent psychoanalyst Wilfred Abse. Unusually for a middle-class Jewish boy, Dannie Abse attended St Illtyd's College, a working-class Catholic school in Splott. Abse studied medicine, first at the University of Wales College of Medicine and then at Westminster Hospital Medical School and King's College London. He received numerous literary awards and fellowships for his writing. In 1989, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Wales.

His first volume of poetry, After Every Green Thing, was published in 1949.

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.

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. The book was later dramatised for BBC Radio 4. He was awarded the Roland Mathias prize for Running Late.

In 2009, Abse brought out a volume of collected poetry. In the same year, he received the Wilfred Owen Poetry Award. Abse was a judge for the inaugural 2010 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine. Abse was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to poetry and literature.

Abse died on 28 September 2014, six days after his 91st birthday.

Published plays

  • – includes House of Cowards, Gone and In the Cage
  • – includes House of Cowards, The Dogs of Pavlov and Pythagoras (Smith)

Radio plays

  • Conform or Die (1957)
  • No Telegrams, No Thunder (1962)
  • You Can't Say Hello to Anybody (1964)
  • A Small Explosion (1964)
  • The Courting of Elsie Glass (1975)

References

Further reading

  • 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".
  • "Dannie Abse", Fellows Remembered, The Royal Society of Literature
  • Dannie Abse Papers at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library