Dannie Abse

I am sorry to hear about the death of Dannie Abse, at the age of 91. I last  saw him at a memorable reading in Southwell Cathedral as part of Southwell Poetry Festival. I can't remember though if it was that reading when he told the joke about being introduced in his native Wales as Dannie Abs. He nudged the chair and said "call me Abse" and the chair replied saying "Yes, and you can call me Jonesy".
Dannie appeared in two Five Leaves' books. He had a couple of poems in our early anthology Poetry for the Beekeeper, celebrating fifteen years of Beeston Poets, where he had read. But we published thirty pages of his poems in Passionate Renewal: Jewish poetry in Britain since 1945, and he also read at the book launch. Was Dannie ambivalent about his Jewishness? Memory, and many of his poems say not, but his 'White Balloon" starts 'Dear love, Auschwitz made me / more of a Jew than Moses did.' He certain knew his Yiddish from his Hebrew which he wrote about in 'Of Two Languages'. The poem that remains most in my mind, however, is 'Case History' describing dealing with a rank anti-Semitic patient - Dannie was a doctor as well as a poet - who did not know he was a Jew, treating him and prescribing for him as if he was his brother.
Dannie's poetry was always intelligent, sometimes playful, but always accessible and stood repeated reading. His publisher was Hutchinson yet he was equally happy in the small press world, bringing out pamphlets with John Rety's Hearing Eye and giving an annual reading at John's Torriano Meeting House. There will be full obituaries in all the broadsheets.

John Rety, notebook in hand

As mentioned a couple of posts ago, some notes on John Rety's A Notebook in Hand, new and selected poems (Stonewood Press)... At Free Verse, Five Leaves shared a reading with Smokestack and Hearing Eye, the publishing house of the late John Rety. Stephen Watts, an old friend of Five Leaves, read from one of his two bilingual Hearing Eye publications telling part of the story of his nonno, his Italian grandfather, on his journey to London before channelling John Rety, his friend and former publisher. Rety's book is one of two from the new Stonewood Press. Founder Martin Parker contributes a short preface to the book, which, with a Foreword by Stephen and an afterword by John's daughter Emily Johns, is perhaps the nearest we'll get to a biography of the admirable (if not always easy) John Reti/Reti Janos. I confess I bought the collection primarily for the prose, the stories about this immigrant Hungarian/Jewish bohemian, national team chess player, publisher, organiser and anarchist who finally, and to his regret, ceased to be a "stateless person" only in 2007. It would be wonderful to think that someone would write a fuller biography of a very full life, began in Hungary, continued in Britain since 1947 and which ended in February 2010.
One particularly sad part of his life was at the end of the Hungarian part of the WWII, his grandmother went up to a Hungarian fascist to tell him the war was over. He shot her dead.
John Rety was certainly productive. Having arrived here aged seventeen, he wrote a novel in English just a few years later. A committed libertarian, he was for many years the poetry editor of the communist Morning Star, but his greatest contribution was Hearing Eye, and the linked Torriano Meeting House, hosting Sunday night poetry readings since 1982.
At the reading, among other poems, Stephen read a yearning-for-utopia poem, aptly called "Freedom", dedicated to another dead anarchist, Philip Samson. Philip, John, and others such as two Five Leaves writers, Colin Ward and Nicolas Walter were part of a generation of talented writers, propagandists and fun-loving free spirits around the journal Freedom. All greatly missed.

John Rety

I am sorry to find fellow editor John Rety, of Hearing Eye, has died. John was born in Hungary in 1930, coming to this country in 1947. Though he came to the notion of anarchism when he was 13/14 ("very late") he became seriously involved in the 1960s, becoming a member of the Committe of 100, and an editor of Freedom. He was a bohemian figure, a former partner of the writer Laura del Rivo, and was the first person to publish Colin Wilson, though he moved away from Colin Wilson as Colin moved to the right politically.

Since the 80s John was one of the key people at Torriano Poets and at Hearing Eye. He had an ability to pull in important readers to this scruffy little venue, none of whom were paid, and who were happy to rub shoulders with "readers from the floor" with all that meant. His press published Dannie Abse and others, actually about 200 publications in total, keeping them all in print. One of his treasures was the posthumous Selected Poems of AC Jacobs.

To everyone's amazement, given his anarchist views, John pitched up as the poetry editor at the communist Morning Star two or three years back, running a popular weekly poetry column which was collected in his Well Versed anthology, now in its second printing. He was thrilled by this, as it ran counter to his usual despairing cry that nobody ever wants to buy poetry.


John Rety would never win any well-dressed man competition. He was never the easiest person to have in a meeting but he did good work at all the organisations he worked with. Our condolences to Susan and Emily.