Robert Sullivan (poet)

Robert Sullivan (born 1967) is a Māori writer from Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Robert Sullivan is of Māori and Irish Galway descent. He belongs to the Māori tribes Ngā Puhi (Ngāti Manu/Ngāti Hau) as well as to Kāi Tahu and describes himself as multicultural.

He graduated from the University of Auckland with an MA and worked as associate professor of English and director of the Creative Writing Programme at the University of Hawai'i. Robert currently teaches a popular creative writing class at MIT's MSVA Campus.

Robert Sullivan is a contemporary writer whose written nine books including the bestselling Star Waka, which was reprinted five times and was listed as a shortlisted in 2000 for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. He had a few books that were on a short list and long list as well. Maui: Legends of the Outcast, illustrated by Chris Slane, was shortlisted for LIANZA Russell Clark Medal. In 2003, Captain Cook in the Underworld was long-listed for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards in the Poetry Category. In 1991, Robert did have success for his first collection, Jazz Waiata, which won PEN (NZ) Best First Book Award

So far, he has published several books and collections of different style and theme - but all explore dimensions of Māori tradition as well as "contemporary urban experiences, including local racial and social concerns." His writing has a post modern feel and shows acute awareness of important Aotearoa/New Zealand issues while linking them in a complex way back to the cultural past.

In the poetic narrative Star Waka (1999) for example, Mr. Sullivan employs traditional Māori story-telling techniques (oral tradition) in order to link contemporary and traditional topics from Aotearoa/New Zealand with concepts and ideas from a European background. This approach allows him to study the identity relation between Māori and Pākehā within transcultural themes of voyaging, personal and national, of the poet and of Māori. In a sense, the poems in Star Waka "themselves function like a waka." "Star Waka" was "lauded for its poetic flair".

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