Ben Brown (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Koroki, Ngāti Paoa) speaks about the power of imagination and its deep roots in te ao Māori at the 2021 WORD Christchurch Festival.

Lyttelton poet Ben Brown (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Koroki, Ngāti Paoa) speaks about the power of imagination and its deep roots in te ao Māori.

(This Margaret Mahy Memorial Lecture was a highlight of the 2021 WORD Christchurch Festival)

Ben Brown

Listen to Ben Brown's talk

Listen to Ben Brown's acclaimed 2020 Read NZ lecture on youth justice here

Storytelling, words, imagination are all concepts linked in the Western World to the idea of literacy.

In this ground-breaking lecture, Ben Brown reconsiders these ideas from the standpoint of the oral culture of Māori life before contact with European settlers.

Weaving together intensely personal memories of childhood, Brown explores what storytelling means to him now as a writer and poet.

Ben Brown: The Port Nicholson Exchange and Public Library opened in 1841 and it is noted in the histories as the first public library in Aotearoa New Zealand.

I've got news for the histories because when I was a kid my mum took me to the first public library in Aotearoa and it was still open. What's more, it's still open today. And what's more than more, it's a Māori library of an oral culture and it opened the first day of the waka. Mum took me to the harakeke section of the oldest library in Aotearoa. No more than a minute's walk from the bedroom.

Turning west through the hallway, through the glass-panelled art deco door at the end that opened onto a curved concrete porch - impressively pillared, but merely for effect. Three steps up or down depending on your perspective. Then westward still across a lawn of vast expanse which one day I would have to mow with precision. Every Sunday in the flush of Spring and early summer, till the dry-off somehow made it less of a chore.

Where I would find myself in the company of an old kowhai tree, which, by the way, you should never offend with the indignities of axe or saw. Nor any example of machinery which could topple it, or otherwise dislodge it from the whenua. Kowhai has potency. Seek permission before you mess with energies such as these that render the yellow of the sun. Or you do so at your peril…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details