Russell Atkins

Russell Atkins is a musician, playwright, and poet from Cleveland, Ohio, known primarily for his contributions to American avant garde poetry. He was born in 1926 and raised on Cleveland's east side by three women - his mother, his grandmother, and his aunt Mae - after his father deserted the family. The family resided in Atkins' aunt Mae's home.

Trained as a musician and visual artist, Atkins studied at Cleveland College, Cleveland Music School Settlement, Cleveland Institute of Music, Karamu House, and Cleveland School of Art.

His plays The Abortionist and The Corpse debuted in 1954. Following this, he founded Free Lance, A Magazine of Poetry and Prose in 1950 with his friend, Adelaide Simon, with the first issue containing an introduction by Langston Hughes. It attracted writers from all over the world, leading the now-defunct Black World to call it "the only Black literary magazine of national importance in existence." In 1959 Free Lance Press began publishing books, with a volume of poetry from Conrad Kent Rivers. Free Lance was under Atkins leadership for more than two decades, and allowed Atkins to correspond with writers from across the country.

Russell Atkins resided in his aunt Mae's house on Cleveland's East Side for 62 years, until 2010, when the city took possession and demolished it. Afterward, he moved into the Fenway Manor apartments near Case Western Reserve University, where he still resides today.

Works

Atkins was one of the first concrete poets in the United States. Concrete poetry is a term for visual or shape poetry, in which the words on the page are arranged in such a way as to enhance a poem's meaning. He was also an innovator in poetic drama. Much of Atkins' most challenging work—including the verse drama The Abortionist—was published in Free Lance.

Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten introduced Atkins' work to magazines. Hughes read his poems at the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago, and Marrianne Moore read them on the radio in 1951.

Atkins' books include Phenomena (1961), Objects (1963), Heretofore (1968), Maleficum (1971), Objects 2 (1973) and Here in The (1976), which is Atkins' only full length poetry collection.

Critical reception

Despite being published almost forty years ago and being long out of print, Here in The continues to attract critical attention. Recently, the poet Joshua Ware, who teaches at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio—not far from Atkins old and current stomping grounds—has become something of a champion on the older poet. In a blog post, Ware writes that "Atkins creates a singular, Cleveland-based beauty in his language and the sounds it produces." And "the poet surveys the city, its residents, and surroundings, noting how even traditionally beatific images, such as a sunset, can transform into something less gorgeous in the crumbling urban cityscapes."

Patrick James Dunagan wrote: "Both prolific and diverse, Russell Atkins’ literary output crosses over traditional divisions of genre, style, and form."

Now nearing 90, Mr. Atkins’ career is experiencing a late resurgence. In 2013 the Pleiades Press at the University of Missouri published a collection entitled Russell Atkins: On the Life and Work of an American Master, and in October 2014 several of Atkins’ friends organized a reading and celebration of the poets’ work at the East Cleveland Public Library in East Cleveland, Ohio.