Te Awhi Rito New Zealand Reading Ambassador for children champions the importance of reading in the lives of young New Zealanders. The first Reading Ambassador announced in May 2021, was writer Ben Brown – a poet from Lyttelton.
For Ben Brown, stories are everything.
“They give you the first idea of yourself. You know, the stories that people tell about you, that's who you are,” says Ben (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Koroki, Ngāti Paoa),
Brown’s job is to inspire a love of reading in young people.
It makes sense, then, that he is a writer - of poetry, children’s books, plays, short stories and a memoir.
Ben grew up with stories, on a tobacco farm in the Motueka valley. His dad, an Aussie with a strong tradition of spinning yarns, used to quote Shakespeare in the paddocks, and it is he who Ben attributes his love of literature to. “I was ten and he was standing in my doorway. He threw it [the book] at me, and just said, ‘read it.’ So I did. It was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and I loved that book.”
“Mum told stories, in a different way,” he says, recalling his ‘ma’, who was born at Waahi Pā, Waikato, telling tales of her childhood and raranga traditions while the two of them wove a bullwhip from harakeke. Stories, then, have always been important to Ben. The reading of them; a continuous source of joy. The telling of them; a captivating art, and one he delivers with gusto. The writing of them; his life’s work.
In his role as Te Awhi Rito, Ben travels the country, talking to kids, librarians and parents to impart his love of words to younger generations.
The name is no coincidence: the ‘rito’, as his mum had explained to him years ago, is the young harakeke shoot in the middle of the plant - the younger generation which must be protected by the older, outer generation of leaves, the ‘awhi rito’. “One of the first things I was asked was, ‘How do you, coming from an oral indigenous culture, reconcile being a reading ambassador?’” Ben says. “Well, you just redefine what reading is. An oral culture way of teaching things is still valid.”
As far as reading goes, Ben disputes the idea that young people, particularly boys, don’t read. “It’s not that boys don’t read, you’re giving them shit they don’t want to read,” he says, and again recalls recognising himself in the ratbag life of Tom Sawyer. This is what hooked him, and this recognition, according to Ben, is what kids need.
A revised version of Ben’s memoir, A Fish in the Swim of the World, about growing up in the Motueka valley, is set to be launched on August 10th at Scorpio Books in Christchurch. As Witi Ihimaera writes, ‘Ben Brown is one of Maoridom’s brightest stars. We, who have been watching his lift-off, know it.”
Ben has always written poetry - a boyhood scribbling which never stopped. In Lyttelton, where he’s spent much of his adult life, he has regularly graced open mic nights with his trademark growl. Like Motueka, Lyttelton (the port town known for being a gathering place for musos and artists of all kinds) has shaped Ben.
“Lyttelton’s just one of those rare little places that you find accidently. Hardworking and a little bit industrial and grimy,” Ben says. “Those are always the places artists gravitate to, because the rent was cheap, at some point.”
When asked if there’s any money in poetry, Ben gives a firm no, and laughs. Life has not always been easy. Ben has his own stories, like all of us, and not all of them are happy. But, as he says, starting to take himself and his work seriously has made all the difference. And through his role as Te Awhi Rito, he has a way to channel his stoke for a well-told story into the same kind of joy for kids around Aotearoa.
Attributions:
Archival images: Penguin Random House
