With the publication of his first book, HOUSEHOLDER, Gerard Woodward emerged as one of the most talented and unusual new poets of the 1990s. In his forthcoming collection AFTER THE DEAFENING, Woodward's powerful imagination, and the details of everyday life take on an extraordinary and exotic significance. 'A kind of punk anthropologist, his unsettling imagination violates all the thresholds between inner and outer. ' LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS 'Vivid and rarely whimsical' OBSERVER 'There are enough poems in this collection which are both felt AND written to justify Woodward's claim on our attention. Where he exhibits emotional generosity, he is very good indeed. ' Carol Ann Duffy
Gerard Woodward (born 1961) is a British novelist, poet and short story writer, best known for his trilogy of novels concerning the troubled Jones family, the second of which, I'll Go To Bed at Noon, was shortlisted for the 2004 Man-Booker Prize.[1] He was born in London and briefly studied painting at Falmouth School of Art in Cornwall. He later attended the London School of Economics, where he studied Social Anthropology, and Manchester University, where he studied for an MA in the same subject. In 1989 he won a major Eric Gregory Award for poets under thirty and his first collection of poetry, Householder, won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1991. His first novel, August, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Award. In 2011 he was writer in residence at Columbia College, Chicago. He is currently Professor of Fiction at Bath Spa University.