Dannie Abse Biography

British poet, born of a Welsh-Jewish family in Cardiff, where he attended the Welsh National School of Medicine before studying in London at King's College and Westminster Hospital. He qualified as a doctor in 1950. After Every Green Thing (1948) was the first of his principal collections of poetry, which also include Tenants of the House (1957), Funland and Other Poems (1973), Ask the Bloody Horse (1986), Remembrance of Crimes Past (1990), and On the Evening Road (1994). His poetry's accessibly discursive tone accommodates a wide range of emotional and imaginative intensities; compassion and a wryly anecdotal humour combine to unusual and sometimes highly disquieting effect in the best of his work. White Coat, Purple Coat: Collected Poems 1948–1988 appeared in 1989, His novels include Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve (1954) and O. Jones, O. Jones (1970), both of which draw on his experiences as a student. He has also published several autobiographical works including A Poet in the Family (1974), A Strong Dose of Myself (1983), There was a Young Man from Cardiff (1991), and Intermittent Journals (1994). The best-known of his numerous plays are collected in The View from Row C (1990). Among his other writings is Medicine on Trial (1968), an evaluation of modern medical practices.