Gregory Woods

"The poet with the sharpest technique for social verse in Britain today"--Peter Porter

"Probably, the finest gay poet in the United Kingdom ... a poet of considerable technical ability and intellectual depth"--Sinead Morrissey

"What an enviable talent Gregory Woods has"--Thom Gunn

"I have read Gregory Woods' poems with real excitement"--Sir Stephen Spender

"Woods is a poet whose thinking is razor-sharp, his wit highly inventive, his sense of history acute, his narratives finely sculpted, his feelings deeply sourced"--Matt Simpson

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Welcome to my website.

I want to use it to post information about my poetry and literary criticism, but also about my career as an academic and teacher. As it develops, I’ll be using it to showcase new poetry and short critical essays, and to post news about forthcoming publications and public appearances.

HIS PHILOSOPHER'S VOICE
 
The rough, the smooth. A change of temperature. Intelligence
is all, but beauty might be worth a modest outlay. Love
would be enough, or failing love a condom full of seed.
Each style goes out of date before the thicker-skinned of us
has even noticed it was ever in; goes out of date
to be revived a decade later, out of date but in,
ironic, camp, supposedly sophisticated. Love
would be enough for anyone. The rough, the smooth; the dark,
the fair. The article, indefinite or genuine.
Deductive reasoning, dear boy (now wriggle out of those
impossibly indecent shorts), has elevated us
above the beastly beasts with no pornography or thumbs.
Deductive reasoning, they call it. That and vintage wine.
In that and that, and other things. In those we find ourselves,
the animal with thumbs to hold a glass of Chateauneuf.
Collateral, colostomy, solicitude and sweet
sagacity! By Jove, was that a whiff of Ganymede?



[(c) Gregory Woods, 2008]