We Have the Melon

Gregory Woods was born in Cairo in 1953 and spent his early years in Ghana. He came to Britain in 1962 and studied at the University of East Anglia. He has taught in Italy, London, and Nottingham.

"The poems of Gregory Woods fall into a Latinate tradition of poetry with a subject matter which might be described as pagan. They remind me often of the work of the Italian poet Sandro Penna... The subject matter may seem raw but in economy and beauty of expression they have a kind of purity... I have read Gregory Woods' poems with real excitement" – Sir Stephen Spender

"I'm not sure that I had ever written a fan letter before to a poet I had not met, but that's what I did when I read two poems by Gregory Woods, 'Fall' and 'Silence', in a magazine. 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. In the sixty-line 'Fall' the rimes riches have a strangely bruising effect, which accumulates to a sadness which is difficult to bear. 'Silence' consists of two short related poems, somewhere between epigram and song, like Elizabethan poetry but in terms completely of the 1990s. I cannot praise it too highly... At last, a good book of good poetry which takes as its subject a frank and unsentimental homosexuality. The triumph is in the numerous poems in tercets. 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... What an enviable talent Gregory Woods has. I recommend this book to everybody" – Thom Gunn

"Woods restores all the meanings of gay, mental and physical, has a fine sense of place and an engaging wit... It's the poems' honesty that stays in the mind, anchoring their flamboyant sensuality in a real time and place" – William Scammell, Independent on Sunday