Russell Atkins

Russell Atkins is an avant garde poet from Cleveland, Ohio. Mr. Atkins 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.

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. Mr. Atkins was also an innovator in poetic drama. Much of Atkins' most challenging work--including the verse drama The Abortionist--was published in Free Lance, a Magazine of Poetry and Prose, which he founded in 1950 and co-edited with his close friend Adelaide Simon. Free Lance was under his leadership for more than two decades, and allowed Atkins to correspond with writers from across the country.

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.

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."

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.

Now nearing 90, Mr. Atkins’ career is experiencing something of 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 of 2014 several of Atkins’ friends organized a reading and celebration of the poets’ work at the East Cleveland Public Library.