Robert Sullivan
Honolulu-based poet Robert Sullivan is of Kāi Tahu, Ngā Puhi, Ngāti Raukawa and Irish descent. He is currently an Associate Professor of English at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa where he is Director of Creative Writing. His sixth book of poems, Shout Ha! to the Sky (Salt, UK) will be published in September 2008. He has won several New Zealand literary awards.
Sullivan comments: ‘This poem comes from a section of my next book devoted to the recent controversy surrounding Maori customary use and local Maori ownership of the foreshore and seabed. A simple majority in Parliament removed these property rights built up by Maori tribes with coastal access over 800–1000 years. The main right removed was the one to advocate in Court for these ownership interests (where advocacy is the right to speak effectively, to argue within and not outside the acknowledged conventions of the legal system). The poem refers to Caedmon, English history, and European literature, in an attempt to draw Pakeha readers’ attention to their own literary and customary heritage. One should not explain poetry though.
In New Zealand currently there are few checks and balances on its one–house legislature since a simple majority, with the signature of the Governor General, might suspend or remove many privileges and rights of citizens without independent binding review. Luckily there was one extra check that the government could not suspend, via a United Nations Special Rapporteur who briefly embarrassed the current government by issuing a critical report in support of Maori.’
Poem: After the UN Rapporteur Supported Maori Customary Rights
