His early writing career included some involvement with Unity Theatre, London, where he contributed material to a number of revues.
This consisted each week of a humorously subversive political poem, often dealing with recent events.
He was also New Statesman's weekly poet from 1970 until months before his death, following in the footsteps of 'Macflecknoe'; 'Sagittarius' (Olga Katzin); and Reginald Reynolds; and succeeded by Bill Greenwell.
He also wrote for television, including an episode of The Prisoner ("Hammer into Anvil", 1967) which is generally considered the most literate episode of that highly literate series:[citation needed] several pieces of classical music figure in the plot; one character quotes Goethe in the original German, and another character quotes from Don Quixote in the original Spanish.
Woddis's obituary in The Times confirmed that he had been a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.