Matariki Bennett
Matariki Bennett (2002–) is a renowned poet whose solo and group performances have won national accolades. She has whakapapa to Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue, and Ngāti Hinerangi, and her culture and heritage remains a significant source of inspiration and passion for her art.
Matariki grew up in Auckland and says she was surrounded by stories and creativity. Her parents, Michael Bennett and Jane Holland, are creatives themselves and fostered this in all their children. Matariki says she first fell in love with spoken word poetry at fourteen years old alongside her close friend, Manaia Tuwhare-Hoani (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Wai), when they came across a Facebook video of Rudy Francisco’s spoken-word performance.
That year in 2017, alongside friends Terina Wichman-Evans (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Whātua, Te Aupouri - Rarotonga, Aitutaki) and Arihia Hall (Te Arawa, Ngāti Tuwharetoa, Ngāti Tukorehe), Matariki and Manaia formed Ngā Hinepūkōrero, a bilingual wāhine Māori spoken word collective. Ngā Hinepūkōrero have become Aotearoa Spoken Word and Australasian Spoken Word slam champions after winning multiple regional and international competitions. In 2019, the collective was the first to represent Aotearoa New Zealand at Brave New Voices, the largest youth poetry festival in the world. In 2021, they were honoured with the Ngā Manu Pīrere award for emerging artists at Te Waka Toi Creative New Zealand Awards.
Collaboration with friends and whānau is common with much of Matariki’s art. In 2022, her poetry was included as part of “Pepi Hā”, a multimedia art piece created in collaboration with her siblings, Māhina and Tīhema Bennett, for Te Tīmatanga exhibition as part of Auckland Pride 2022. Another collaborative art piece by the siblings, “Guns and Bad Stuff”, was featured as part of Corban Estate Arts Centre’s Bodies of Woven Code collection.
A year later, Matariki was named the 2023 Wellington Slam Poetry Champion.
Matariki released her debut poetry collection, e kō, nō hea koe, in 2025. e kō, nō hea koe is a series of goodbyes and attempts to slow the shedding; she says it's an exploration of identity and ambitions, whakapapa, te reo Māori and hītori, her friends and whānau, and this is woven throughout the collection. Matariki has expressed on many occasions how important her friends and whānau are to her creativity, and e kō, nō hea koe reflects this. The collection includes poems inspired by brainstorm sessions with her friends after competitions and features accompanying artwork painted by her sister, Māhina Bennett. Matariki’s mum’s Motherlines paintings are featured as the collection’s cover.
In addition to her poetry, Matariki is an accomplished screenwriter and director. In 2019, she received a diploma in Screen Production, Screenwriting, and Drama Directing from the South Seas Film and Television School. During this time, she wrote and directed her first short film, Tōku Reo, which follows a daughter learning her language to heal generational mamae of language loss, and inspiring her Pāpā to learn.
Her second film, “Wind, Song and Rain,” was released in 2021 as part of the Loading Docs 2021 short documentary series. It follows her friend and fellow poet, Manaia Tuwhare-Hoani, as she retraces her Koro Hone Tuwhare’s steps by returning to his crib at Kaka point and writing a poem to him.
The following year, Matariki co-wrote and co-directed “Te Kohu” alongside her parents, which was released within the TVNZ anthology series, Beyond the Veil, which features six supernatural and horror stories inspired by the Māori, Pasifika, Filipino, and Chinese people of Aotearoa. “Te Kohu” is a supernatural short film about a family learning to let go of their daughter and sister after she falls in love with a Patupaiarehe. “Te Kohu” was nominated for two awards tw at the 2022 New Zealand Television Awards and New Zealand Film Awards.
Matariki also directed and co-wrote the short film Kikokiko, which was produced through Hurō Productions in 2026 with support from the New Zealand Film Commission. Kikokiko follows the journey of a whānau of wāhine Māori navigating the passing of one of their daughters. It completed post-production in May and is set to enter the festival circus later in 2026.
For Matariki, creating is part of everyday life; “My whole family works creatively together,” she said in an interview with us in 2025, “... All of my creative mahi informs each other - I find myself leaning into stories of poets when writing for the screen, and I picture scenes playing out when writing poems.” Matariki and her father participated as curators in the Auckland Writers Festival in 2023 and 2024, and as curators and hosts in 2026. In 2025, Matariki shared her art with tamariki and rangatahi as part of Read NZ’s Writers in Schools: Pōkai Tuhi programme.
