WARTON LECTURE ON ENGLISH POETRY

'We keep the bread and wine for show' - consistent irony and reluctant faith in the poetry of Dannie Abse

Professor Tony Curtis, Professor of Poetry, School of Humanities Law and Social Sciences, University of Glamorgan

Thursday 25 October 2007

Dannie Abse (1923-) had his first collection of poetry accepted by Hutchinsons in 1946 when he was a medical student in London. Although he wishes few of those early Dylanesque pieces to survive, he has gone on to publish poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction for sixty years. Despite that fact, despite the continuing success of his autobiographical novel Ash on a Young Man’s Sleeve, which has remained in print since 1954, Dannie Abse is a writer who has not received the critical attention which he deserves.

Professor Curtis will talk about Abse's early activities as editor of the magazine Poverty and Poetry in the 1950s and the 'Mavericks' group of poets; also Dannnie Abse’s roles as doctor and poet; wearing both 'the white and purple coat'. He will discuss the tensions between those roles and examine the ways in which the writer's identity as Londoner and a Cardiff Welshman also underpins his work. Abse's Jewish family was part orthodox, part secular: 'Hitler made me more a Jew than Moses did'; this lecture will address those issues of faith, anger and compassion compelled by the events of the Twentieth century, Abse’s century.

Goodbye, 20th Century.

What should I mourn?
Hiroshima, Auschwitz?

…

Goodbye, 20th Century,
your trumpets and your drums,
your war-wounds still unhealed.
Goodbye, I-must-leave-you-Dolly,
goodbye Lily Marlene.
Has the Past always a future?
Will there always be
a jackboot on the stair,
a refugee to roam?

Professor Tony Curtis has taught writing at the University of Glamorgan for more than twenty years. He has published over twenty books of poetry, criticism and cultural commentary.

Lecture chair: Professor Wynn Thomas, FBA, Professor of English, University of Wales, Swansea and Director of the Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales

More about the Warton Lectures on English Poetry