- Gregory Woods
Articleissues
tone=March 2008
expand=March 2008Gregory Woods (born in 1953 in
Egypt ) is a British poet who grew up inGhana .Woods began his teaching career at the
University of Salerno . Since 1990 he has worked atNottingham Trent University , where, in 1998, he was appointed Professor ofGay andLesbian Studies, the first such appointment in the United Kingdom.citation |title=British Queer Cinema |first=Robin |last=Griffiths |publisher=Routledge |year=2006 |isbn=0415307791 |page=xi ] He was awarded a PhD by theUniversity of East Anglia in 1983, and a DLitt in 2006. Woods' main areas of interest are twentieth-century gay and lesbian literature; post-war gay and lesbian film and cultural studies; and theAIDS epidemic. In addition to his poetry collections, he is the author of a number of critical books, including Articulate Flesh: Male Homo-eroticism and Modern Poetry (1987) and A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition (1998). He has been a member of the board of directors of East Midlands Arts, a Midlands Regional darts champion (1995) and is a Fellow of the English Association.Woods is a technically gifted poet who writes in free verse, syllabics and metre. Thom Gunn wrote of the poems in his first collection: 'I admired them especially for their technical virtuosity, in that it was technique completely used, never for the sake of cleverness but as a component of feeling... taken together, they constitute a handbook of desire; separately, each is an exquisite insight, rapid and rich. The predominant tone is of a kind of delighted astonishment that mere sensuality can be so meaningful.' Woods' subject matter is by no means limited to gay themes and his work is characterised by classical and literary allusions, a dry cynicism and waspish humour. In the Times Literary Supplement of October 16th, 1992, Neil Powell wrote 'The overwhelming impression of We Have the Melon remains that of frankly sexual joyousness matched by serious literary intelligence, a rare combination and a reassuring one.'
Poetry
*"We Have the Melon" (1992)
*"May I Say Nothing" (1998)
*"The District Commissioner's Dreams" (2002)
*"Quidnunc" (2007)References
External links
* [http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=831 carcanet.co.uk]
* [http://www.ntu.ac.uk/research/school_research/hum/staff/57706gp.html Nottingham Trent University]
* [http://www.knittingcircle.org.uk/gregorywoods.html Woods at the knittingcircle.org.uk]
* [http://www.gregorywoods.co.uk/ Author Home Page]
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