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Biographical note: Robert Sullivan is a critically acclaimed and award-winning New Zealand Maori poet who is now based in Honolulu and teaches creative writing at the University of Hawai’i. He has performed at festivals in the US, New Zealand, Italy, India, Germany and Canada. As well as five other books of poetry, he has co-edited Whetu Moana (an anthology of Polynesian poetry), Best New Zealand Poems 2006, and co-edits the online journal Trout.
BIC Basic
EAN13: 9781844714551
ISBN: 9781844714551
Author: Robert Sullivan
Title: Shout Ha! To The Sky
Series: Salt Modern Poets
Product class: BC
Language: eng
Audience: General/trade
BIC subject category: CTCH1
Publisher: Salt Publishing
Pub date: 01-Apr-10
Extent: 116pp
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 7 mm
Weight: 174 gms
Supplier: Gardners Books
Supplier: Ingram Book Group
Supplier: Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability: NP
Price: GBP 9.99
Price: USD 15.95
Rights: World
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description/annotation: Shout Ha! to the Sky explores history and contemporary life from a Maori person’s perspective, and seeks to restore possibilities removed through the forces of colonialism. The poetry is intimate, wry, funny, angry and always loving.
Main description: Shout Ha! to the Sky explores history and contemporary life from a Maori person’s perspective, and seeks to restore possibilities removed through the forces of colonialism. The poetry is intimate, wry, funny, angry and always loving. It weaves into and dialogues with multi-genre work by a range of Pacific authors such as Anne Salmond, Albert Wendt, Haunani-Kay Trask, Witi Ihimaera, and the late Hone Tuwhare, as well as writing from outside the Pacific by Anna Seward, W.B.Yeats, Ezra Pound, Keats, Vijay Seshadri, Dante Alighieri.
Table of contents:
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
1 HISTORIES 1
1 Maui’s Alternate Prayer 2
2 Love song for Michael King 3
3 The Charge of the Brown Brigade 4
4 William Colenso, On the Eve of the Treaty’s 50th Jubilee … 6
5 Hanoverian London 8
6 After Reading W.S. Merwin’s The Carrier of Ladders and then finding the Extinct Birds of NZ website. 9
7 Buller’s Honour 11
8 Letters to Lord Ranfurly 12
9 Born again 14
10A decade a maze 15
11 Reconciling 16
12 About Anna Seward’s Elegy on Captain Cook, 1780. 17
13 What if … 18
2 POETICS 19
14 Negative Capabilities 20
15 Review 21
16 The Winding Stair 22
17 Seven Voices 23
18 Took: A Preface to “The Magpies” 24
19 Gesturing at the Sky 25
20 Redemption song 26
21 Investigator 27
22 Letting the sun go down 28
23 Elegy for Traveling 29
3 TIKANGA / CUSTOMS
24 Posture Dance 32
25 Va-rua Tupu 33
26 Fragments of a Maori Odyssey 35
27 Arohanui 36
28 Citizen of the World 37
29 Starboard 38
30 wake 39
31 Cape Return 40
32A Poem for Whangarei on the Opening of the New
City Library 41
33 Messenger 43
34 God and Fathers 44
4 PERSONAL 47
35 Biographical Data 48
36 Hui 50
37 Songs 51
38 On Flowering Ground 52
39 Lunch with Frank O’Hara 54
40 The Price 55
41 Rangatahi 56
42 Waiata Whaiaipo: Lover’s Song 57
43 Love 58
44 Boyle 59
45 Ata Wai 60
46 Rumination 61
47 Spines of Smoke 63
48 Vissi D’Arte, Vissi D’Amore 64
49 My Uncool Popular Tunes 65
50 Kick-started by a Bananarama Track 67
51 Civilization 68
52 Note to PJ 69
53 When I meet people here 70
54 Northland Museums 72
5 FORESHORE AND SEABED POEMS 77
55 For sure 78
56 After the UN Rapporteur Supported Maori
Customary Rights 79
57 Nga- Tohu Whenua 80
58 Suite of Poems Addressed to Prime Minister Helen Clark 81
59 Poetics Tunnel 85
60 One Art 86
61 Fancy that 87
62 Canst Thou Draw Out Leviathan with an Hook? 88
63 Let’s Karanga The Whole Thing Off 89
64 Manawawera 90
65 Someone Asks Us Why 91
66 It Will Leave You 92
67 The Sneeze 93
68 Greenstone Monologues 94
69 Spiralling Ground 96
70 Karakia 98
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Excerpt from book:
35 Biographical Data
A distant shore, another slip of land fished out by the trickster,
or unmouthed by Pele near the house of the rising sun,
Hale-a-ka-la on the eponymous island of Maui. Why am I so far?
Where is home now that my earth mother is Papahanaumoku?
Tangaroa himself is diasporic Kanaloa.
I am a Polynesian migrant become no longer tangata whenua here
in this State where Cook’s parts lie. Hawaiki here is Kahiki,
which is at least the same as Rangiātea, temple centre of the world.
My waka has lost its k, become a wa’a, but not its mojo.
Why am I here? Am I an exile? My country has been settled
by another race, become another place: New Zealand. Yet can I say
it’s better here? The climate’s wonderful. When I go to Aotearoa
the chill hurts my bones and that’s the warm spots! Yet I’m Maori.
I am Irish. I am Scottish. My English ancestor Wynyard ended up
governing the colony. My Ngāti Manu ancestor Pomare’s name
comes from Tahiti, and I take satisfaction in that too. My selves
clap and sing dirges, shanties, and waiata to bone flutes,
bagpipes, and ribboned tambourines. My selves collect in me
and I label each with post-its. But labels don’t stick to the ocean.
They don’t plant themselves happily on waka prows and sterns.
I am here and I am not here. I am in several places at once.
This poem is peeling. I need some sunscreen — 30+ and waterproof.
Unpublished endorsement: Robert Sullivan is one of New Zealand's and the Pacific's foremost poets, passionate, provocative and always transcendant. In his new collection, he shouts Ha! to the Sky. Take a deep breath, fill your lungs and join him. Witi Ihimaera, author of Whale Rider Unpublished endorsement: Robert Sullivan has established a reputation as the leading poet of his generation in the Pacific. Albert Wendt |
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