David Eggleton is a poet of Papālagi, Rotuman and Tongan descent, with ancestral connections to the villages of Motusa and Ma’ufanga. He lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin and was the New Zealand Poet Laureate between August 2019 and August 2022. The Wilder Years: Selected Poems was published by Otago University Press in 2021. He is a co-editor of Katūīvei: Contemporary Pasifika Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand, published by Massey University Press in 2024. His most recent poetry collection, Lifting the Island, in which ‘The Navigators’ appears, was published by Red Hen Press in Pasadena, California in September 2025.