When I asked Dannie Abse to join this year's jury for the Forward prizes for poetry, he wondered what it would involve. "Reading just about every book of poetry that's come out this year," I replied.
"Ah!" he said. "Well, it's a good way of keeping up. I do like to know what's going on."
In the event, the final judging for the prizegiving that will take place on Tuesday 30 September was done without Dannie, though not without his contribution. He was a powerful member of the jury when it met in June, at one point banging the table at the suggestion that a certain eminent name be dropped from one of the shortlists. "That would be a shame," he said. "Not just a mistake, but a shame." The name stayed.
Jeremy Paxman, the jury's chairman, knew better than to argue back: indeed, when the judging threatened to get bogged down, he turned to Dannie, who provided a marvellously simple solution involving crumpling and uncrumpling scraps of paper and much laughter.
For Dannie was funny and fearless 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, he ditched it.
"I hope to go into a poem sober and come out a little drunk. And if I do then that's a real poem."
