NZ Poetry Shelf
Poetry Shelf Monday poem
By Poetry Shelf - Paula Green | Posted: Tuesday Nov 26, 2024
‘Voice carried my family, their names and stories’ by Robert Sullivan
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
Over the coming months, the Monday Poem spot will include poetry that has stuck to me over time, poems that I’ve loved for all kinds of reasons.
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 (Ngāpuhi, Kāi Tahu) is the author of nine books of poetry as well as a graphic novel and an award-winning book of Māori legends for children. He co-edited, with Albert Wendt and Reina Whaitiri, the anthologies of Polynesian poetry in English, Whetu Moana (2002) and Mauri Ola (2010), and an anthology of Māori poetry with Reina Whaitiri, Puna Wai Kōrero (2014), all published by Auckland University Press. Among many awards, he received the 2022 Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for a distinguished contribution to New Zealand poetry. He is associate professor of creative writing at Massey University and has taught previously at Manukau Institute of Technology and the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. His most recent collection is Hopurangi / Songcatcher (Auckland University Press, 2024).