A New Yorker by birth, Marc Woodward has been a lifelong resident of rural England. His writing reflects his surroundings in the remote West Country, often with a dark undercurrent - and a degree of wry humour.
He has been widely published in journals, anthologies and online, and currently presents the Marco Radio Show – a weekly hour of poetry and music - broadcast by Sandcastle Radio, an internet radio station based in Pensacola, Florida.
He was writer-in-residence at The Wellstone Center in Santa Cruz, CA. in 2018, shortlisted for the 2018 Bridport Prize, won the 2019 Teignmouth Poetry Festival ‘Keats Footsteps Prize’, and was commended for the 2020 Acumen Poetry Prize and the 2020 Aesthetica Creative Writing Award.
He is a 2022 Pushcart nominee.
His collections include A Fright of Jays (Maquette Press 2015),
Hide Songs (Green Bottle Press 2018),
The Tin Lodes written in collaboration with Andy Brown (Indigo Dreams 2020),
Shaking The Persimmon Tree (Sea Crow Press 2022),
and Grace Notes, a second collaboration with Andy Brown, also published by USA based publisher Sea Crow Press, in 2023.
He is currently finalising a new collection scheduled for publication in April 2025.
In addition to writing he is also an accomplished musician who has recorded, performed, and taught internationally. His album Bluemando is available on ITunes and Spotify.
Aside from his artistic activities he has also worked in finance and even presented much of the second series of Homes Under The Hammer for the BBC!
He was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease and this is touched upon in a number of his newer poems.
Reviews:
Beautifully crafted poems...that sing in the dark of darkness
Canto Magazine;
...stories of moonlight and wildlife in the strange small wildernesses of the south west.
In its strongest passages the relationship with the landscape is both brutal and beautiful - hints of the sublime and the realistic one finds in Jack Clemo or Ted Hughes.
Ink, Sweat and Tears.
[Woodward]...achieves a level of observational exactitude, empathy, and at times, quite frankly, psychological menace, which many would fail to muster in a full-length collection.
Sabotage Reviews
In his new collection ‘Hide Songs’, Marc Woodward is the factotum of a gruff, stubbled country of hedgerows, pubs and disrepair. He avoids twee landscapes or bucolic destitution for a mud-and-gravel, wing-and-wind patchwork.
In poems populated by rescued animals and women, silky transformations, hangovers, fishermen and pub gigs, as well as fifty different ways of describing the changing skies of the West Country, there is always a notable quality of craft present, too. Nothing is wasted on a fancy phrase, when a telling detail will do. Like John Burnside’s poetry, Woodward writes gently and concentratedly about things vanishing and uncertain,
The Blue Nib
Of ‘The Tin Lodes’
This is a very fine collection, a closely observed and well-researched piece of work that succeeds in operating on several different levels at once. The collaboration is seamless and a testament to the way these two writers have worked so well together on this project. Fully recommended.
Quill & Parchment
Of ‘Shaking The Persimmon Tree’
In these searching, songful poems, Marc Woodward reflects on the ricketiness of life; of the body, and on the certainty of earthworms. His imagery elevates the natural world to its rightful place; birds, sky and trees glimmer like new-found things, while his pragmatism puts on its boots, picks up its keys and looks you straight in the eye.
Helen Ivory
As well as a poet, Woodward is an accomplished musician. His poetry is correspondingly neat, practised, highly lyrical. The poems are singing, in a predominantly minor key, but they are a joy to listen to.
Andrew Geary, Acumen Literary Journal 9/22
