Whakamihi nui ki a Robert Sullivan

Robert Sullivan, the Douglas Orator for 2014, photo by Liz March

Our new New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2025-2028

When the very first Going West Festival opened in a cold concrete warehouse at Corban Estate in 1996, one of the first voices to ring out was that of Robert Sullivan (Ngāpuhi, Kāi Tahu) in Breathing Words – a session grounded in Māori oral and written literature, appearing alongside Ngahuia Te Awekotuku and Bernard Makoare.

That same weekend, Maurice Shadbolt took the stage – part of a panel with Dick Scott and Kevin Ireland.

Today, as Robert Sullivan is named New Zealand Poet Laureate, the Going West Trust is restoring Shadbolt’s former home to become a writers’ residency – a place to nurture new stories in the very house where one of Aotearoa’s great literary voices once lived and wrote.

In his 2022 poem “Hello Great North Road”, Sullivan writes of the route out west:

You’re a sleek black eel 

pumping blood all the way to Karekare,

to Muriwai, to Bethells, to Piha…

And it feels like a full-circle moment – Sullivan's words capturing the spirit of Going West. They speak to a legacy that continues: grounded in place, powered by story, and always heading west.

Read the full poem here: Hello Great North Road