The poet Dannie Abse, who read from his latest, shortlisted collection to great audience acclaim at the TS Eliot Prize earlier this year, has died at the age of 91. A statement from the Poetry Society said: “We're immensely sad to report the death today of Dannie Abse - our great friend, and former Poetry Society president. It was only on Friday we heard he was ill. A wonderful long life, and energetic to the last, but such a loss.”

Abse was born in Cardiff, the younger brother of politician and reformer Leo Abse and the eminent psychoanalyst, Wilfred Abse. Although best known as a poet, Dannie Abse worked in the medical field, and was a specialist at a chest clinic for over 30 years. His first poetic volume, After Every Green Thing, was published in 1949. His most recent collection, Speak, Old Parrot, was published last year.

In 2005, his wife Joan was killed in a car accident. His poetry collection, Running Late, was published in 2006, and The Presence, a memoir of the year after his wife died, was published in 2007; it won the 2008 Wales Book of the Year award. The book, which was later dramatised for BBC Radio 4, was described by Carol Ann Duffy, reviewing it in the Daily Telegraph, as "written from the most private part of a poet's heart". 

Abse was appointed a CBE in the 2012 New Year honours for services to poetry and literature. He was also one of the judges for this year’s Forward prizes. Susannah Herbert, director of the Forward Arts Foundation, said: "Dannie was fearless and funny to the end: when asked how he decided whether a collection was any good, he said he would read the first 10 pages and if nothing struck him as interesting, it was ditched. 'I hope to go into a poem sober and come out a little drunk. And if I do then that’s a real poem.' We will miss him very much on Tuesday and dedicate this year’s Forward Prizes ceremony at the Southbank centre to his memory."

Abse read from his most recent collection, Speak, Old Parrot, at the TS Eliot Prize in January this year at the Royal Festival Hall. On the night compere Ian McMillan joked that Abse, who received a rapturous reception from the audience at the end of his eight-minute slot, should not be thought of as either a former bright young thing, or as a grand old man, but as a “bright, senior thing”. 

You can hear Abse, introduced by McMillan, reading at the TS Eliots here

PHOTOGRAPH: DAVID ANDREW / WRITE OUT LOUD