Poetry Out Loud "Body of John" by R.A.K. Mason. Read by Kat Zolita Mason
Channel: Kat Zolita Mason
Date: 2019-12-31

This is a video of me reading one of my father R.A.K. Mason's poems, called 
"Body of John".  In my home country of New Zealand he is known as " The father of New Zealand poetry" to quote from a passage in Barrowman's book  "MASON - the life of R.A.K. Mason".which also describes his poems, thus  'His poems are 'one of the glories of New Zealand literature' - gloomy, sexy and sardonic" . While this is a true description,  I would also describe the poems as 'deeply honest with a dark sense of humor, rebellious, questioning, humanitarian, showing the power of an original questioning mind, and with a great compassion for his fellow man and the human condition". 
The Nature of his poems seems so relevant today, to young people, (of the Beat Generation -applicable), to musicians and Rappers also, and to those living on the streets of New York or to those who have suffered anywhere. Although they were written a very long time ago now, they still seem contemporary today.

R.A.K. Mason, to quote Rachel Barrowman, "dumped 200 copies of his first book, "The Beggar", into Auckland Harbour, in disappointment, disgust or despair, because no one would buy it. It is a legend in New Zealand history : a symbol of a time - the 1920s and 1930s - when a true vital, native literature, struggled to be written or heard in a provincial and puritanical country". You can buy his poems from the links below. 

Collected Poems :
https://vup.victoria.ac.nz/collected-poems-rak-mason/

"The Uncollected Poems" -available internationally from "Cold Hub Press" at the  following link 
https://vup.victoria.ac.nz/collected-poems-rak-mason/https://www.coldhubpress.co.nz/uncollected-poems-r-a-k-mason-cold-hub-press----.html

The biography by Rachel Barrowman about his life is available now from the following link.bookhttps://vup.victoria.ac.nz/mason-the-life-of-r-a-k-mason/
I only discovered he was my father after a very long search involving d.n.a. testing and simple math, so sadly, I am not included in the book, although it helped me,  greatly, to identify him as my father, for which I am very grateful.