The Writers of Wales Database

ABSE, DANNIE

85 Hodford Road, Golders Green, London, NW11 8NH
Tel: 02084 581961
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Poet, novelist and dramatist. Dannie was born in Cardiff, where he also went to school. His first book was published whilst he was still a medical student. He was Writer-in-Residence at Princeton University, USA from 1973-1974. Dannie is a frequent contributor to the BBC and was President of the Poetry Society between 1979-1992. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Welsh Academy. Dannie was awarded with a Hon. D. Litt. (Wales) in 1989 and won the Roland Mathias Prize in 2007. Running Late (Hutchinson, 2006), was on the Wales Book of the Year 2007 Long List.

Dannie’s book, entitled The Presence (Hutchinson, 2007), is a work of prose which explores his grief at the loss of his wife. It won the 2008 Wales Book of the Year award. 

Selected Publications:
Dannie Abse (Studio Vista, 1963)
Three Questor Plays (Scorpian Press, 1967)
Ash on a Young Man’s Sleeve (Vallentine Mitchell & Co Ltd, 1971)
Funland and Other Poems (Hutchinson, 1973)
Way Out in the Centre (Hutchinson, 1981)
The View from Row G: Three Plays (Seren, 1990)
There Was a Young Man From Cardiff (Hutchinson, 1991)
White Coat, Purple Coat - Collected Poems 1948-1988 (Persea, 1991)
On the Evening Road (Hutchinson, 1994)
Intermittent Journals (Seren, 1994)
Welsh Retrospective (Seren, 1997)
Be Seated Thou (The Sheep Meadow Press, 2000)
The Strange Case of Dr. Simmonds and Dr. Glas (Robson Books Ltd, 2002)
The Two Roads Taken (Enitharmon Press, 2002)
Dannie Abse: New & Collected Poems (Hutchinson, 2003)
Running Late (Hutchinson, 2006)
The Presence (Hutchinson, 2007)
New Selected Poems (Hutchinson, 2009)
Dannie Abse: A Sourcebook (Seren, 2009)
Two For Joy (Hutchinson, 2010)
Goodbye Twentieth Century (Parthian Books, 2011)

Contributed to:
Twentieth Century Anglo-Welsh Poetry (editor) (Seren, 1997)
Homage to Eros: 100 Great Poems of Love and Lust (editor) (Robson Books, 2003)
The Music Lover's Literary Companion (co-compiler) (JR Books, 2009)



The Presence (Hutchinson, 2007)

Loss, grief and love are the themes of this remarkable memoir from one of Britain’s most distinguished poets.

Some months after Dannie Abse’s wife Joan died in a car accident in June 2005, he began to write a diary which is both a record of present grief and a portrait of marriage which lasted more than fifty years. It is an extraordinary document, painful but celebratory; funny as well as sad, bursting with joy as well as sorrow and full of a deep understanding of what it means to be human.

To purchase this title from amazon.co.uk, please click on its front cover



 

The portrait of Dannie featured here is by painter Lorraine Bewsey. It forms part of a twenty-piece collection entitled Portraits of Welsh Writers. Lorraine can be contacted at lorraine@lorrainesartstudio.co.uk