This evening, on 27 November, the National Library is celebrating 60 years of the Library with a ‘Laureates line up’ — a rare gathering of nearly all living New Zealand Poets Laureate. Enjoy readings from legends like Elizabeth Smither, Jenny Bornholdt, Michele Leggott, Cilla McQueen, Ian Wedde, Karl Stead, Selina Tusitala Marsh, David Eggleton, Chris Tse, and Robert Sullivan, with Fergus Barrowman as MC.

6pm – 8pm, National Library, Wellington

It is also a chance to celebrate our new Poet laureate, Robert Sullivan. From my extended shelf of favourite poems by Robert, I have chosen a poem that has travelled with me for a long time. I posted this poem last year to launch my ongoing Playing Favourites series. The comments I wrote in 2024 still stand. This is why poetry matters. This is why honouring a poet who has gifted us so much through his sublime poetry collections matters.

Robert also reads a few poems.

I highly recommended Robert’s most recent collection, Hopurangi / Songcatcher (AUP) which was shortlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award at the 2025 Ockham Book Awards. I wrote: “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’.’ — Paula Green, Poetry Shelf

This is a day to celebrate poetry, to listen to poets, to read poems, and to advance the connecting and vital strength of words.

a reading

a poem

Voice carried my family, their names and stories

Their names and fates were spoken.
The lands and seas of the voyage were spoken.
Calls of the stroke at times were spoken.
Celestial guidance, sightings, were spoken.
Prescriptions – medical and spiritual – were spoken.
Transactions – physical and emotional – were spoken.
Family (of), leaders (to), arguments, were well spoken.
Elders (of), were well spoken.
Burials were spoken.
Welcomes at times were spoken.
Futures lined up by pasts, were spoken.
Repeating the spoken were spoken.
Inheritance, inheritors, were spoken.
Tears at times were spoken.
Representations at first were spoken.
The narrator wrote the spoken.
The readers saw the spoken!
Spoken became unspoken.
[Written froze spoken.]

Robert Sullivan
from voice carried my family, Auckland University Press, 2005

When Robert Sullivan’s poetry collection, Star Waka, entered the world in 1999, it felt like a significant arrival. This was a poet who sang from his past present future, his ancestors friends loved ones. His collection voice carried my family particularly resonated with me, and it is a book I draw from my shelves when I crave nourishment.

This poem. This poem in particular, that speaks even more deeply to me today, when voice brings us together across the motu, bringing us together through stories, songs, history, aroha and the respect that matters.

This poem that reminds me, so acutely, so vitally, how much voice matters, how much a poem can matter – when the world our nation and our people hang by a fragile thread. When I hang by a fragile thread.

Today this poem, this precious poem, is a poem to hold close.

Robert Sullivan is Aotearoa New Zealand’s 14^th Poet Laureate. He belongs to Ngāpuhi (Ngāti Manu, Ngāti Hau / Ngāti Kaharau) and Kāi Tahu (Kāti Huirapa ki Puketeraki) iwi and is also of Irish descent. He has won many literary awards. His most recent books are Hopurangi / Songcatcher (AUP) which was shortlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award at the 2025 Ockham Book Awards, Koe: An Aotearoa Ecopoetry Anthology coedited with Janet Newman (Otago University Press 2024) and a collection of essays coedited with Anna Jackson and Dougal McNeill, Te Whāriki: Reading Ten New Poets from Aotearoa (AUP 2025). Robert is Associate Professor in Creative Writing at Massey University. He lives in Ōamaru.

Auckland University Press page