Māori poet Robert Sullivan was born in Auckland, New Zealand. He earned an MA from the University of Auckland. His poems examine Māori culture; in a review, Craig Santos Perez says, “Sullivan shifts through the ever-changing terms of an oral tradition into the scripted presence of the word. … Sullivan suggests that the poem is a site for the intersections of Māori identity to enter into critical and lyric dialogue.” Sullivan edits the online journal trout and teaches creative writing at the Manukau Institute of Technology.