Tunui | Comet

(Paperback)

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Description

Tunui | Comet is the first collection in more than a decade by one of our most important living Maori poets. Rolling easily between korero Maori and the canonical traditions of English-language poetry, through karakia and powhiri, treaty training and decolonisation wikis, Robert Sullivan takes readers on a marvellous poetic hikoi. Guided by Maui and Tawhirimatea, Moana Jackson and Freddie Mercury, we walk from K'Rd council flats to Kaka Point, finding ourselves and our ancestors along the way.

Reviews

'Tunui | Comet displays all the elegance, eloquence and craft one would expect from this Maori writer, who is one of the outstanding poets of his generation. This is a distinctive and rich collection about unity and location, using the compass of poetry to celebrate our archipelago of islands. Robert Sullivan has deftly fused the classicism of the European tradition with Maori animism and a new world wonder, even as he defamiliarises the ordinary.' (David Eggleton)

Author Bio

Robert Sullivan is the author of a number of books of poetry including Star Waka (Auckland University Press, 1999), which has gone through multiple reprints, a graphic novel and a prize-winning book of Maori legends for children. He co-edited, with Albert Wendt and Reina Whaitiri, the anthologies of Polynesian poetry in English, Whetu Moana and Mauri Ola, and an anthology of Maori poetry with Whaitiri, Puna Wai Korero. He has taught at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa and Manukau Institute of Technology.