Dannie Abse, CBE

With Dannie Abse in Stockholm

My belated congratulations on the award of CBE to Dr. Dannie Abse, Britain's greatest living poet.

From his website:

 Dannie Abse was awarded a gong in the 2012 New Years' Honours list. His CBE for services to poetry and literature was somewhat reluctantly accepted.

“It’s a compliment, and one should always say thank you,” he said from his home in Golders Green. “Yes, I did think whether to accept it. But then I realised that Harold Pinter, far more left-wing than me, and others too have accepted honours.”

He added: “You start writing poetry as a gentle pursuit, but it can be tough in many ways too. You have to go into the darkness of oneself, as it were, to come back with some light.”

Oxfam Reading (YouTube)

From As I Was Saying

I'll not compete with those nature poets you advance,

some in country dialect, and some in dialogue 

with the country- few as calm as their words:

Wordsworth, Barnes, sad John Clare who ate grass.

From A Small Desperation, Hutchinson, 1968:

From The Listener, 10 November, 1988