Speak, Old Parrot

Dannie Abse was born in Cardiff, Wales on September 22, 1923. He trained as a doctor at King's College London and Westminster Hospital, where he qualified in 1950. In 1951, he was called up for national service as a medical officer in the RAF. In 1954, he went to the Middlesex Hospital, where he stayed for the rest of his medical career, as specialist in charge of the chest clinic at the Central Medical Establishment.

His first collection of poetry, After Every Green Thing, was published in 1948 and his first autobiographical novel, Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve, was published in 1954. His other collections of poetry include A Small Desperation; Funland; White Coat, Purple Coat: Collected Poems, 1948-88; Two for Joy: Scenes from Married Life; Speak, Old Parrot; and Ask the Moon. He won the Roland Mathais Prize in 2007 for Running Late and the Wales Book of the Year award in 2008 for The Presence. His other novels include Some Corner of an English Field; O. Jones, O. Jones; There Was a Young Man from Cardiff; and The Strange Case of Dr. Simmonds and Dr. Glas.

He wrote two books of memoirs, A Poet in the Family and Goodbye, Twentieth Century. He also wrote a number of plays. In the early 1950s, he edited a magazine entitled Poetry and Poverty and compiled a variety of anthologies including Wales in Verse and the Hutchinson Book of Post-War British Poets. In 2012, he accepted his CBE for services to poetry and literature. He died on September 28, 2014 at the age of 91.

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