Part interview, part reading, Ruth Padel and Dannie Abse cover writing, love, humour and the role of art, along with the Abse's latest book, The Presence, a stark and moving literary confrontation with absence and loss.
A wonderful opportunity to hear the wit and wisdom of two of Britain's most distinguished poets.
Dannie Abse was born in 1923 in Cardiff. Throughout his life he has combined careers of both doctor and writer. These are aspects of his life that, together with his Jewish background and Welsh nationality, are integral themes in his poetry. In addition to his writing his own poetry books -most recently Running Late- he has edited many poetry collections and has published both fiction and memoirs. The Presence is the moving diary he kept after the tragic death of his wife.
The award-winning poet and travel writer Ruth Padel has been Chair of the UK Poetry Society since 2003 and is the great great grand-daughter of Charles Darwin. Her most recent collection of poems is Darwin: A Life in Poems. She is also the author of I'm A Man: Sex, Gods and Rock 'n' Roll which relates rock to ancient Greek myth and modern masculinity, 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem, and Tigers in Red Weather, a travel-memoir which describes searching Asian jungles for wild tigers and explores the moral and political questions facing us in dealing with wilderness today.
