Yadayada, or Don’t Worry, It all Adds Up
(Feb 17th, then)
The bunting and cicadas cleared, The Herald having sailed
the middle island for the natives’ trade in blankets for curly iron gall,
I snuggled into the basement with rats and worms, snails
sliming my finest parchment (historians only mention the rats
but I know the rest.) I had been nuzzling and gnawing
muzzles in the far north, and in the King Country I purged
my mind of all sovereign thoughts of a beautiful crown
as my pillow was smoothed by whiskery rat down.
Oh for a koauau to share this basement with. I am bent down
with worry, and hunger. Low, small. A worm. A crawler.
Me down. The governor up. These words echo like a dreamt
inferno. I trusted my treasured words to hate! I promised
feasts for all, with open hearts and flowing wine! I played
sly, turned my new in-laws into dogs thinking
I’d fly with the birds. But now I am a moth eaten by moths.
I am a rag for a strop designed to pacify, and closely shave, hell.
Robert Sullivan
Robert Sullivan is Aotearoa New Zealand’s 14th 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.
To launch Poetry Shelf 2026, our current Poet Laureate Robert Sullivan has written a sequence called “Tidbits of Te Tiriti”. He wrote these Te Tiriti Tidbits in the voice of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. There will be one published each day for this Waitangi Day weekend, and then a fifth one today, on Feb 17th, which is the day his Ngāti Manu tūpuna signed Te Tiriti.
NZ Poetry Shelf 