Dannie Abse

Poet; doctor; author and playwright

Welsh poet, doctor author and playwright. Collections include Running Late and Speak Old Parrot. Volumes of autobiography include Goodbye Twentieth Century.

I only describe a sunset, a car travelling on a swerving mountain road, that’s all.

From ‘An Old Commitment’ in Poetry Magazine (June 1972)

‘Leave my soul alone, leave my soul alone,’ that voice so arctic and that cry so odd had nowhere else to go ...

From ‘In the Theatre’ in White Coat Purple Coat: Collected Poems 1948-88 (London: Hutchinson, 1989)

Dannie Abse
by Jemimah Kuhfeld
C-type colour print, November 2008
NPG x133079
© Jemimah Kuhfeld