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.
Woods' subject matter is by no means limited to gay themes and his work is characterised by classical and literary allusions, a dry scepticism and waspish humour.
Also in the Times Literary Supplement (9 December 2016), Paul Batchelor wrote: 'A poet of tremendous facility and feeling, Gregory Woods has a way of making the formal challenges he sets himself look easy.'
In London Grip (January 2017), John Lucas wrote: 'The late, great Peter Porter once observed that Gregory Woods was probably the most accomplished of contemporary formalist poets, which, if you pause to think where such praise comes from, is not merely a copper-bottomed endorsement but outstandingly generous.
Woods wrote the foreword to the 1995 Basic Books edition of I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual by Pierre Seel, and the introductions to the Valancourt Books editions of The Harness Room by L.P. Hartley, Look Down in Mercy by Walter Baxter, The Man on the Rock and To the Dark Tower by Francis King, The Feathers of Death by Simon Raven, and A Room in Chelsea Square by Michael Nelson.