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“... has seen a terminal date added to its brackets. An impressive new talent appears in Gerard Woodward’s Householder. Born in North London, as English as the Stanley Spencer on his cover, Woodward sets up house in the suburbs of poetry, aggressively flourishing his title-deeds. Yet an opening sequence ...”

“... answer. He shifted the handset to his chest, letting it ring and ring. The blurb on the back of Gerard Woodward’s second collection, After the Deafening, suggests that we see him as a poetic Kurt Vonnegut who is writing ‘the science fiction of everyday life’. This analogy is not too far-fetched. The poem ‘Your Shell-Likes’ actually mirrors ...”

“... you’re not)’ – is very similar to the pill that is resisted by the teenage protagonist in Gerard Woodward’s August (Chatto, £12.99): ‘he’s finding it hard to accept he’s not as special as he thought he was.’ Janus Jones’s father had paid for years of piano lessons so that his son could become ‘someone who made a living by ...”

“... Yeats was delighted with Barker’s ‘lovely subtle mind and a rhythmic invention comparable to Gerard Hopkins’. What could possibly go wrong for this golden boy? The fact that Barker fell completely from public esteem long before his death in 1991 begs the question whether he was any good in the first place. It is one of the few questions not addressed ...”

“... tragedy, from the Oklahoma City bombings to the O.J. Simpson, JonBenet Ramsey and Louise Woodward cases. Mourners and survivors say they need it, readers and audiences claim they desire it, yet the files remain open. ‘Closure’ is not news. The mechanism of cultural Schadenfreude ensures the endless recycling of the story, with variations that ...”