Sam Hunt NZ Poet

So there was this rough as guts bloke who travelled around NZ as i was growing up, Sam Hunt. He's go into working mens clubs and pubs and read his poetry. The NZ working class didn't know good poetry from bad but admired anyone with the balls to step up and relate their impressions of this human condition malarky while we sunk more than a few after a hard days yakka.

He'd wander round the country, inventing himself as artists do. The thing was sometimes he would recite a poem and it held so much of what you recognised that it sucked you in and you'd start to be transported and then the sneaky bugger would take you somewhere new before depositing you back where you'd started at the bar. He wasn't the only poet but he was the first I ever saw that wasn't in a book.



I once had this thing with someones hand on my brow. I'd be transported. It was so simple and powerful.

Poetry is as close to that.... I'll take it.