Abse, Dannie

(1923- )

   Welsh poet, playwright, essayist, novelist and medical doctor who integrated both his Welsh and Jewish heritages into his poetry. He was editor of the literary magazine Poetry and Poverty from 1949 to 1954. His first book of verse, After Every Green (1948), has been followed by many other individual poems and collections. His Tenants of the House (1957) addresses moral and political concerns in parable form. One of the themes he explores in Poems, Golders Green (1962) is of being a Welshman and Jew in London. He has also published novels and works for the theatre. His autobiography, A Poet in the Family (1974), captures the feelings of difference of a Jewish boy growing up in South Wales and the only Jewish student in a Roman Catholic grammar school. "He is a lyric poet of depth, whose imaginative reach can be both adventurous and demanding" (foreword to White Coat, Purple Coat: Collected Poems 1948-1988. New York: Persea Books, 1991). The first line of the closing stanza of "Presences" reminds us, "The future's future is another place...."

   Sources: Dannie Abse Selected Poems. Canto Publications. ISBN: 1903515009: Compact Disk. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry. Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.