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Dannie, the doctor who writes
IT was a still rather melancholy Dannie Abse who appeared at Burgh House in Hampstead last week to talk about his life as a doctor and a poet, read some of his work and reluctantly speak about the terrible tragedy last year when his wife Joan died in a car accident in Wales.
Dr Abse (pictured), 84, told the audience: “I really am living a posthumous life.”
He spoke about his childhood in a Jewish family in Cardiff, and about his two brothers – Wilfred, who became an eminent psychoanalyst, and the passionate Leo who went into law and later became a Labour MP for more than 30 years.
“I was inspired by Leo’s rhetoric and the way he would deal with words on a soapbox talking about unemployment in the Welsh valleys and about the war in Spain. It all made me want to write political poems, but then I got a little older and I realised that I couldn’t save the world.”
He said he didn’t really choose to become a doctor. “What happened was that when I was about 12 years old I felt great sympathy for our sick cat, Merlin, and I told Wilfred that I might become a vet. He said, why not become a doctor like so many of your uncles and cousins?
He had always written poetry, starting when he was still at school, and his first published volume of verse, Every Green Thing, was written when he was a medical student.
He has since written, edited or been involved in the compilation of more than 50 books, including five acclaimed novels and five plays which were all produced on the stage.
Asked what makes him sit down to write poetry, he replied: “I love that quote by Pasteur who said: ‘Chance favours the prepared mind.’ My mind is always prepared to wait for those chances, and sometimes those chances turn up in an experience that has some narrative in it. Or it might be just a simple image.
“For example, you know how apples turn brown after a bite. I never saw any reference to that image in English literature, so I wrote a poem in which I used it. It wasn’t very good, but I saved the image until I wrote the next poem. In fact it wrecked the next poem – but eventually I found the right context for it.”
Had being a doctor influenced his poetry? “It has, yes. It’s always strange to me how many doctor/writers and poets have not called on their medical experiences. It’s as if they, like Keats, wish to escape from the rather dramatic things they have witnessed.
“But I always felt that poetry should be an immersion into reality, not an escape from it. And therefore at a certain point I began to call on my medical experiences and I hope that my poetry has gained as a result.”
MATTHEW LEWIN
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