This is a small piece from a student, Toby Hynes, who attended the trip to the Auckland Writers Festival on Tuesday, 23rd August along with 26 other students Years 9 - 13.

It was a beautiful morning. We were rushing out the door after a decently early get up. I got to Kamo High School to find that everyone was grouping up for a roll call from the teachers, Ms. Craig and Miss Butler. I managed to join the group smoothly. Shortly after our names were down and we had a short wait for the bus. We were off on a quick detour to Tikipunga High and off we went, Auckland bound.

Arthur the bus driver drove us there at a leisurely pace as we relaxed and prepared for the day to come. Upon our arrival at Aotea Square, we were quickly led into a huge building where we got to sit for a couple more minutes for a snack and to take everything in. Next, we went into one of the biggest rooms I've ever been in. Three storeys of seats with a big stage directly down from us. We were on the second floor. The room made me feel like an ant around humans, small and insignificant. It was awesome to see the other schools in attendance - schools from Auckland, Kaipara, and Northland.

We waited for a couple of minutes. The first presenter came out. She told us about her book “In Our Own Backyard.” It is about the Springbok tour throughout New Zealand in 1981 and the issues of race and discrimination it brought up in New Zealand society. Even though the book is fictional, there are a lot of different experiences that the author and her friends went through that add an aura of truth to the story. Then it was my favourite time of the day - lunch!

For the next session, we moved back into the gigantic room for the face-off of the Sonnet poem vs Free verse poem vs the Dialogue poem. The authors' names were drawn out of a hat in which order they would go in. In the first round, each poet presented a poem they had written in their chosen writing style. During the second round, poets presented a poem written by someone that inspires them. To declare the winner the names of the authors were read out and whoever had the loudest clap won. For me, I thought the dialogue got the biggest clap but free verse ended up pulling through for the win. We were told to stay in our seats because it wouldn’t be long before the next presentation.

This is the presentation that stood out to me the most: Mohamed Hassan. Mohamed spoke about the difficulties and the racism, casual or otherwise, he has experienced throughout New Zealand living as a Muslim. He presented his poems in between his talking that was different from any other I had ever heard. I listened intently through the whole thing, with time flying by.

After the final presentation, it was a quick photo outside then back to where the bus dropped us off. It was a fantastic day. Thank you to the organisers of the Auckland Writer’s Fest for their support in getting us to such an amazing event and also to our parent helper Zion.