Welsh Retrospective - Softcover

"Welsh Retrospective is a selection of poems about his native Wales by one of Britain's most popular poets. Dannie Abse's Welsh and Jewish backgrounds have been essential to his writings. Wales and Cardiff, in particular, have haunted his imagination. In this revealing new book book he writes movingly about the Cardiff of his childhood, home of his beloved Bluebirds football team, and also about the small village of Ogmore-by-Sea, location of early holidays and for many years his home in Wales. Selected from the whole of Dannie Abse's writing career, the book includes such well known and well-loved poems as “Return to Cardiff” and “In the Theatre” alongside many previously uncollected poems. Abse's range is remarkable. Vivid character portraits of Aunt Alice and Cousin Sidney sit next to tributes to poet predecessors, Dylan Thomas and Vernon Watkins. Some poems draw on Jewish writings, others on Welsh language literature. Welsh Retrospective gives fascinating insights into Dannie Abse's Wales and his verstility as a poet. His Wales is anything but parochial, his poems effortlessly universal. Every reader will be struck by a poet who has a gift for accepting mortality with wise optimism. The book is edited by Cary Archard who provides an introduction and notes on the poems."

Although he left his native Cardiff in 1943 to study medicine in London (and has been there ever since), Dannie Abse's Welsh background has been essential to his writing. In Welsh Retrospective Abse addresses his relationship with his homeland through poems both old and new, from classics like "Return to Cardiff" and "In the Theatre" to newly penned "In the National Museum" and "Welsh Valleys Cinema, 1930s".

The resulting collection is a thoroughly enjoyable poetic celebration of Abse's relationship with Wales, in particular the Cardiff of his youth. Characters such as Cousin Sidney and Aunt Alice are mixed with boyhood memories and leavened with external influences: ancient Welsh myths and legends, literary forebears, industrial heritage, and Abse's beloved Bluebirds, the Cardiff City football team.