Hopurangi -Songcatcher Poems from the Maramataka, Robert Sullivan
Auckland University Press, 2024

A review

I often use the word ‘breathtaking’ when I am tagging a poetry collection I love, and yes, poetry can take your breath away but, after reading Robert Sullivan’s sublime new collection, Hopurangi -Songcatcher Poems from the Maramataka, I am musing on the idea, ‘breath-enhancing’. I am in the luxurious position of being able to slow read, to wind the reading pace down to country road rambles, so I may savour and absorb and delight. I do want to add that I am huge fan of beach running, of getting into a sweet rhythm that gets mantras flowing, and I relish the jumpstart of crime fiction and exhilarating breakneck poetry.

Robert’s new collection is inspired by Maramataka, the Māori lunar calendar. After a long absence from Facebook, over a three-month period, he posted a poem day, attuned to the lunar cycle energies, drawing upon what he was learning about Maramataka. Each poem is tagged with an energy meter – low, medium, or high. The resulting poetry is a testimony of whanau, language, the natural world and aroha.

Language. Robert weaves together English and te reo Māori and I am reminded how important our language choices are, how what we say in one language is often only approximated in another, how a single word, phrase, line or concept only reaches fullness in its mother tongue. How the musicality of one language might resound in a different key when transposed into the musicality of another. I know this from the decades I spent thinking in Italian. I am reading Robert’s collection with my ears acutely engaged, listening to the music and cultural resonance of the two languages. There is also the of the uplift of the commonplace through refreshing word choices – rain is ‘like television static’, spring blossoms ‘pop / like a summer shirt’, ‘a uniform grey jersey / covers the day sky’.

Love. Herein lies the lifeblood of the collection, the current that connects and moves as you read. Robert is speaking to and with and for his mother, father, son, friends and loved ones, authors that have sustained and comforted him, from Keri Hulme to Hone Tuwhare to Maya Angelou, Ruby Solly and Arihia Latham, Sinead Overbye. What is love? he asks. How to measure this mysterious presence (or absence)? And, how do I love you? He might view things that remind him:

of love, such as the gold over the snow-capped mountains,
and the gold in fields of spring, and the gold
in dripping kōwhai blossoms that look sweet.

But they don’t measure up really.
They’re compensation. Those images are ideas
and lack the bite, kaha te katakata kicks and lick of life.

 

from ‘Ōuenuku: Anei Anō he Rā’

Planting. The poet is tending his paddock, planting trees, making a rabbit-proof fence, giving back to Tāne Mahuta, collecting litter from the beach, but he is also planting himself, setting down roots in the poems, come together on and between the line as a form of home, learning to play the kōauau, singing waiata, writing the daily poem, open to making mistakes and to keep trying, to share kai, to share kōrero, to say ‘thank you’, to travel to various places that are home.

Rhythm. This is also a vital connection. There is the rhythm of the line, resembling a steady voice, like a speaking voice. There is the rhythm of the seasons, Maramataka, the weather, of generations, of knowledge and language passed down, the ebb and flow of energy, of waiata, of storytelling. There is

As someone who depends upon reading glasses, the font choice is a crucial ingredient in a book for me – I found the faint grey font difficult to read, for others it would be even more so. It is something for publishers and poets to bear in mind. But once my eyes became accustomed, I fell in love with the effect, I don’t even know how to describe it, but it added an aesthetic layer that entranced, beguiled, softened.

In one poem, Robert is at an English teachers council hui, advocating the need for schools to fill the curriculum with ‘local Māori poets first, / and then local poets, and local Māori writers and then local writers’:

until we fill every school

in Aotearoa with our voices

because our voices

are recognised and loved

by our kids. Let’s speak

at school like it’s home.

 

from ‘Tangaroa Whāriki Kiokio: You’ll Get an Email from Me’

How this plea resonates alongside the current political edicts, prescriptions and alarming descriptions of what the Coalition Government pledges for the child, the adult and our planet. In Robert’s sublime and breath-enhancing collection, I am finding seeds of hope. Of te reo Māori growing alongside English, both languages vital on our tongues, of tending our relationships, whether human or planetary, with care as opposed to greed, of acknowledging our spikes and our difficulties, of never ceasing to learn new things. I hold this collection out to you as a book of freshness, of reassessing and finding one’s place, a book of experience, wisdom, friendship, hope. And above all, a book of aroha.

A reading

Robert reads ‘Continuous Positive Airway Pressure Machine’

Robert reads ‘Pupurangi Shelley’

Robert reads ‘The Paper Chase’

Robert Sullivan (of Ngāpuhi, Kāi Tahu, and Irish descent) is the author and editor of fifteen books. He co-edits The Journal of New Zealand Literature with Dr Erin Mercer, and is President of the NZ Poetry Society. Among his awards is the Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for a distinguished contribution to New Zealand poetry. Hopurangi | Songcatcher: Poems from the Maramataka is his ninth collection of poetry and is published this month by Auckland University Press. The three recorded poems are “Pupurangi Shelley,” “The Paper Chase” and “Continuous Positive Airway Pressure Machine” from his new collection.

Auckland University Press page