Tommy Little is a comedian and broadcaster. He co-hosts Carrie & Tommy on the Hit Network with Carrie Bickmore, and he’s an ambassador for HoMie, the Melbourne label that supports young people affected by homelessness.

Back in April he told the Stellar podcast about a hobby he’d picked up while spending the past year trying to, in his words, “better myself.”

“I’ve become obsessed with poetry. It’s so embarrassing. I’m reading it, writing it, all of it.”

After his stand-up shows he’d started taking five or six people into the theatre toilets and reading them poems while standing on the loo.

“I break out in a full body sweat, and so if someone was to walk past, they’d see a man standing on a toilet while five strangers watch him, and it would look like a full blown breakdown.”

Five months on, he’s found a way to get the poems to people he’ll never meet.

He explained it in a video last week.

“I left some poems in a park,” he said. “So I printed them out into these little scrolls, rolled them up, and put them inside a lock box. It says take one.”

Next to it sits a second box. This one says leave one.

“If you want to leave me a poem while you’re there, you can do the same thing and I’ll change them over weekly.”

The lockbox is at the skate park corner of Edinburgh Gardens in Fitzroy North. The code is 8008.

Take one, leave one. New poems every week, whoever turns up.

Tommy has no idea who opens that box. Could be a kid skating alone because his mates didn’t show. Could be someone walking past on a bad day who needed someone else’s words to do the talking for a minute.

If you’re near Edinburgh Gardens, go find the box. Take a poem. Leave one back.

So Tommy, we want to honour you.

For your advocacy and fundraising for young people doing it tough.

For the journey you’re on to better yourself, and for leaning into something that makes you feel vulnerable.

And because of that, you never know whose day you might change for the better.

Keep doing the good thing

💚