John Gray (poet) French, German, Latin, music and art. In 1882 he passed the Civil Service exams and, five years later, the University of London matriculation exams. He joined the Foreign Office where he became a librarian. Gray is best known today as an aesthetic poet of the 1890s and as a friend of Ernest Dowson, Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde. He was also a talented translator, bringing works by the French Symbolists Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, Jules Laforgue and Arthur Rimbaud into English, often for the first time. He is purported to be the inspiration behind the title character in Wilde's "The
Vivian Smith (poet) surrounding Australian poetry. With his fellow poet and great friend, the late Noel Rowe, he published the anthology "Windchimes: Asia in Australian Poetry" (Pandanus Books 2006). Vivian Smith (poet) Vivian Brian Smith (born 3 June 1933) is an Australian poet. He is considered one of the most lyrical and observant Australian poets of his generation. Smith was born in Hobart, Tasmania and studied French at the University of Tasmania from which he graduated with a Master of Arts. He left Tasmania in the late 1950s and has lived since then in Sydney, where he was a longtime professor at the