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
William Sewell (poet) the Law Commission. William Sewell (poet) William Seymour (Bill) Sewell (1 December 1951 – 29 January 2003) was a New Zealand poet. He was a Burns Fellow at Otago University, Dunedin in 1981–82. He was a frequent reviewer of books, particularly for the periodical "New Zealand Books", to which he was appointed co-editor in 1997. He was also a book editor. He died of cancer in Wellington. He published three collections of poems: "Solo Flight" (1982), "Wheels within Wheels" (1983) and "Making the Far Land Glow" (1986) and also "A Guide to the Rimutaka Forest Park" (1989). His poems have