Ben Brown: Championing the importance of stories

Frank Film

Frank Film gets to know New Zealand’s first Te Awhi Rito Reading Ambassador.

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), with an easy, near-toothless grin.

He is New Zealand’s first Te Awhi Rito Reading Ambassador, and his 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.

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Joseph Johnson/Stuff

Poet and writer Ben Brown is New Zealand’s first reading ambassador.

For a kid with a dream of being an obscure poet, he’s made it, and some.

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 10 and he was standing in my doorway. He threw it [the book] at me, and just said, ‘read it.’ So I did,” Ben tells Frank Film.

“It was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and I loved that book.”

His 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.

Chris Skelton/Stuff

Brown’s reading ambassador role is a national role that focuses on advocacy and education about the importance of literature, reading and books to wellbeing more generally.

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.

Alongside inspiring a love of reading, his role as Te Awhi Rito, to which he was appointed in 2021, is to champion the importance of stories. 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.

Don Scott/Stuff

Three-year-old Vita Flood enjoys the effort that has gone into a collection of story blankets depicting books on Māori exploits, tradition and values at Rehua Marae, while author Ben Brown reads to both children and adults.

“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.

Ben reckons he was a writer before he was a reader.

“For whatever reason, I developed a fondness for words,” he says, “The idea that you can throw a bunch of words together and just by the way they sound together, that can make it beautiful.”

Joseph Johnson/Stuff

Brown says stories have always been important to him.

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 Wednesday 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.”

Alongside writing for a living, Ben has always written poetry – a boyhood scribbling that 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.

Joseph Johnson/Stuff

Brown at his Lyttelton home.

“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.