Author(s): Brown Ben

NZ Poetry

In 2021, Lyttelton poet Ben Brown spent time with the young offenders housed in the country's Oranga Tamariki youth justice residences, sharing korero and kupu and tikanga. This putunga korero collects the words the rangatahi were inspired to write in their sessions with Ben, many of them putting their experiences on paper for the first time. A number are murderers, thieves, meth couriers and drug dealers, gangsters and extortionists, and all are little more than children. Their poems and stories are raw and direct, and often smart or funny, and exactly what we need to understand why these young lives took the turn they did. A powerful sequel to the bestselling How Did I Get Here? Soliloquies of Youth, edited by the man who is Aotearoa's first Te Awhi Rito Reading Ambassador.