Connecting through words

CONNECTING THROUGH WORDS

Listen closely to Robert Sullivan’s poetry and you’ll hear more than his voice – you’ll hear the language of his tūpuna breathing through the lines. The Tāmaki Makaurau-born and raised, newly crowned New Zealand Poet Laureate 2025, has been on a journey
of self-discovery. Kaituhi JODY O’CALLAHAN reports.



SWAPPING THE HUSTLE OF THE BIG SMOKE WITH A SOUTHERN TOWN famous for the shuffle of penguins, Sullivan says connecting with the Oamaru whenua of his Nana and father Bob “does feed the soul”.

“It’s been quite a moving journey for me personally. I’m the first in the whānau to have gone back.”

He has been embraced by his Kāti Huirapa people and hopes to help his wider whanau connect too, through his books. This reconnection comes to the fore in his latest bestselling book of poetry, Hopurangi - Song Catcher, which adds to his considerable collection, including nine published poetry books.

His favourite piece in that collection is one dedicated to his father – Te Awa e Rere nei – at Puketeraki Marae, where Robert now spends time bonding with his whanauka. “It was healing at Karitane,” he writes.

Robert also has Ngāpuhi Nui Tōnu whakapapa, affiliations to Ngati Raukawa, and Ngāi Tai, and is of Irish, Scottish and English descent.
While deeply connecting with his Kāi Tahu roots in the South Otago coastal town, he is learning waiata and local moteatea.

He loves the beautiful Hauteruruku ki Puketeraki Waka Club and has even tried his hand at a different form of art there, helping to sand the exhibited, double-hulled coastal voyaging waka tuarua, Kuramātakitaki. It was as a young boy growing up in Auckland that Robert recalls his Onehunga Primary School teacher telling them to lie on the grass, look at the sky, and write about the clouds. His classmates wrote about candy floss and other fluffy items … he composed a chronicle about an alligator. It was then he first started seeing the beauty in writing.

Then, aged about 20, he attended his first writers’ festival in Mt Eden in Tamaki Makaurau. He was asked who he writes for. His response was:
“I write for posterity.”
“I think a poet is a kind of witness for the times. A poem is a message
in a bottle, and it’s a bottle that travels through time and space.”

When things get oppressive in a society it’s often poets who flourish – despite also facing persecution – even gaining Nobel Prizes under
severe regimes.

“It is my job to record what I see and feel.” “To hear the beautiful words and learn the moves that speak of our places of home, Hikaroroa, Pahatea, Ka Iwi a Weka”, he writes.

“I’ve always known I was Kāi Tahu because of Nana. But I didn’t know she was fluent in Māori until she got dementia and started speaking it fluently to me. It was moving to hear that voice I hadn’t heard before.”

After 40 years of learning te reo Māori himself, almost as long as he has been writing poetry, it still “ain’t easy” and he admits his writing may be full of hapa. But these days he is less whakama about that (it’s OK in the modern times) whereas it felt less so in the past.

While his reo Māori confidence ebbs and flows, there is a soulfulness in the kupu that has always given them a home in his poetry. Many people question why he uses Māori in his English poetry – “I can’t understand what he is saying!” “But for me it’s a transmission of knowledge and it’s an acknowledgment of our tupuna. To use te reo Māori even in an English context has a resonance. We all have mauri and hard hau. It’s those energies that the language carries.”

“It’s OK to make mistakes and smile about them with others who are your relations and just carry on carrying the airs and graces of our whānau nui”, he writes.

While in India attending an indigenous writers’ conference, Robert was told by Adivasi attendees they didn’t want to hear his English poems, they wanted to hear his haka. “They wanted to connect on the soulfulness plane. They understand what indigenous people understand everywhere.”

There are similarities in their stories, both unfortunately with a lot of shared mamae. But he’s glad he lives in Aotearoa with a founding document, Te Tiriti, which most indigenous people don’t have. Decolonisation is a common theme of his work, and he finds it
strange that not everyone sees “decolonisation is cool.” After all, colonisation is essentially one group of people thinking they are better than another group, and “they try to run the show and not as equals.”

To decolonise, both groups need to see the humanity in each other, he believes. Former colleague, the late kaumātua Kukupa Tirikatene, used to describe Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a wonderful feast, and he thought a lot about his whakaaro.

“We all bring our different, favourite dishes to the table. That’s what Te Tiriti enables us to do, to sit around a table and enjoy a wonderful meal together … instead of a family feud on Christmas Day.”

He has no easy answers to what feels like unequal times and a not so harmonious meal, but his mahi is just to bear witness to the times.

“I’ve eaten shellfish and muttonbirds in the weekend (at Hone Tuwhare’s) and my fill of happiness at Puketeraki. This kai is kōrero,
from our whenua too”, he writes.

On announcing his Poet Laureate Award, National Library of New Zealand Acting National Librarian Gina Smith commended Robert for his distinctive and important voice as a poet in Aotearoa. He amplifies Māori and Pacific voices in complex cultural narratives. “He has great standing as a poet, teacher and scholar, he holds considerable mana and leads with grace and humility,” she says.

The position’s tenure is for three years, during which the laureate is supported to create new work and is expected to advocate for New Zealand poetry and inspire current and future readers. Robert aims to spend that time staying close to marae – either at Puketeraki or at that of his mother’s Ngāpuhi people, KAretu in the Bay of Islands – and run wānaka there with an emphasis on being regional.

He has a writing space at The Crucible Gallery in the old iron foundry in the historic precinct of Ōamaru, “which offers a beautiful simile, where poetry is like a machine.”

He plans to hold regular sessions inviting the public to bring their poems, because poetry is for everyone.
“It’s not an elite art form. We are all poets.”