William Sewell (poet)
William Sewell | |
---|---|
Born | 1 December 1951 Athens, Greece |
Died | 29 January 2003 Wellington, New Zealand |
Nationality | New Zealand |
Alma mater | University of Auckland, University of Otago, Victoria University of Wellington |
Genre | Poetry |
Notable awards | Robert Burns Fellowship |
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.[1]
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 a link to modern German poetry and a political focus e.g. The Ballad of Fifty-one, about the 1951 waterfront dispute and Erebus: A Poem, about the 1979 Erebus disaster.[citation needed]
He was born in Athens in 1951 where his parents Rosemary Seymour and William Arthur Sewell were living at the time. His father was a former professor of English at the University of Auckland and later both his parents taught at the University of Waikato. [2]
He lived in Southern Europe and then England where he attended school. He studied German at the University of Auckland and lectured in German at the University of Otago. He completed a PhD on the poetry of Hans Magnus Enzensberger at the University of Otago in 1978.[3] He had a law degree from the Victoria University of Wellington and was a legal researcher for the Law Commission.[citation needed]
Works
[edit]- Solo Flight (1982)
- Wheels within Wheels (1983)
- Making the Far Land Glow (1986)
- A Guide to the Rimutaka Forest Park (1989)
- Erebus: A Poem (1999)
- The Ballad of Fifty-One (2003)
References
[edit]- ^ "Obituary". The Dominion Post. Wellington. 6 February 2003. p. B8.
- ^ Matthews, Kay Morris (2009). "Rosemary Seymour - links and legacies". Women's Studies Journal. 23: 4–17.
- ^ Sewell, William (1978). The cannon and the sparrow : patterns of conflict in the poetry of Hans Magnus Enzensberger, 1955-1975 (Doctoral thesis). OUR Archive, University of Otago. hdl:10523/9762.
Further reading
[edit]- Robinson & Wattie (1998). The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature. Oxford University Press. p. 487. ISBN 0-19-558348-5.
- 1951 births
- 2003 deaths
- New Zealand male poets
- University of Auckland alumni
- Academic staff of the University of Otago
- Victoria University of Wellington alumni
- 20th-century New Zealand poets
- 20th-century New Zealand male writers
- 21st-century New Zealand poets
- Deaths from cancer in New Zealand
- 21st-century New Zealand male writers
- University of Otago alumni
- New Zealand writer stubs