Te Kahu Rolleston

Rolleston, Te Kahu's poetry is rhythmic, charged with politics, lyricism and punchlines. Te Kahu has said that his poems are mixture of Kapa Haka and Battle Rap. During his schools years Te Kahu says he was ‘the battle rap champion.’ However rap became secondary to Te Kahu after he grew tired of constantly needing to ‘diss the competitor.’ Instead, Te Kahu’s interest shifted toward using his talent with words to create poems that educate and inspire. Some of his contemporary influences include African-American spoken word poet, Black Ice. Te Kahu says ‘Black Ice is the man. He’s from America, but all of his words relate to Māori.’ He also regards hip-hop artists Dam Natives highly. At the end of the day however, Te Kahu says his biggest inspiration is his grandfather ‘speaking on the paepae doing his whaikōrero.’

In 2013 Te Kahu Rolleston wrote his first poem Te RarangaTira. The poem opens with ‘Tipuna, Tipuna…. for the first time at Paparoa I felt safe, and secure within the mauri of my moana, able to see us natives, feeding off the light and rising to the skies like the kauri and the tōtara.’ This poem marked the emergence of themes that reoccur in his work. Te Kahu’s poetry often unifies two worlds; the contemporary and the Māori spiritual world. Te Kahu says ‘I create poetry that links people to people and people to places. That’s a big part of (Māori) kaupapa because if you have respect for your people and the place you are in, there is nothing greater than that.’ In 2014 Te Kahu was the winner of the National Poetry Slam competition.

In 2015 Te Kahu was selected to attend The Banff Centre’s Indigenous Writing Programme alongside Witi Ihimaera. Based in Canada, the Banff Centre is one of the world’s leading arts and creativity hubs. The programme included intensive writing, mentoring and a presentation performance. Te Kahu felt honoured to attend, especially alongside Witi Ihimaera, who Te Kahu grew up reading and describes as a ‘legendary figure.’

Te Kahu is also very popular in schools and among rangatahi. He has worked extensively in schools and in the community teaching spoken word and promoting poetry as a way of learning.

Te Kahu says, ‘There are a lot of people who think poetry is just soft but once they see my poetry they realise that’s not always the case and you see the shift from ‘not interested’ to ‘I want to do that’ almost immediately.’ Te Kahu also believes that poetry has educational benefits similar to traditional Māori moteatea, waiata and oral story telling as a means to retain information and pass it down through generations. Te Kahu sees poems as mnemonic devices; techniques people can use to improve their memory. ‘I visit schools to help them create mnemonic devices. This involves kids turning their school work into poetry to make it easier for them to learn.’ Te Kahu has said that touring schools is his ‘dream job’ and his aim to see more young poets emerge. He says, ‘I want them to be better than me.’