Russell Atkins

Russell Atkins was born on the twenty-fifth of February 1926 at Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Perry Kelley Atkins — a Cleveland Black Pullman porter — and Mamie Belle Kelley Atkins. He was raised in the principal Cleveland Black community of the principal post-Great-Migration Cleveland Cedar-Central neighbourhood.

He completed his secondary education at East Technical High School at Cleveland in 1944 — and was self-taught in poetic-and-musical composition across the principal post-1944 Cleveland Black-Bohemian-and-musical-and-poetic community.

He co-founded with the principal Cleveland Black poet Casper LeRoy Jordan the principal Free Lance literary magazine at Cleveland in 1950 — the principal first Black-American avant-garde literary magazine of the post-Second-World-War American Black-literary canon. The principal Free Lance literary magazine published approximately fifty quarterly issues from 1950 to 1979 — and was the principal post-1950 Cleveland Black-Bohemian-and-avant-garde poetic-and-prose literary-magazine of the principal post-1950 American Black-Bohemian community.

He published his first poetic volume A Podium Presentation: Poems and Music at the principal Free Lance Press at Cleveland in 1960 — and his second poetic volume Phenomena at the principal Wilberforce University Press at Wilberforce, Ohio in 1961.

He published the principal poetic volumes Objects of 1963, Heretofore of 1968, Here in The of 1976, Whichever of 1978, World'd Too Much of 1985, and Selected Poems and Essays of 2018 — at the principal post-1960 Free-Lance-Press-and-other-small-press Cleveland Black-avant-garde poetic canon.

He was the principal Cleveland Black-avant-garde poetic-and-musical composer of the principal post-1950 Cleveland Black-Bohemian-and-avant-garde-and-experimental-poetic-and-musical community — and produced across the principal post-1960 Cleveland period approximately twenty experimental-musical compositions for piano, voice, and small ensemble.

He collaborated across the post-1960 Cleveland period with the principal Cleveland Black-Bohemian-and-experimental community — including the principal experimental musicians Helen Collins and Hale Smith, the principal experimental poet Adelaide Simon, and the principal Karamu House Cleveland Black-community-arts-and-theater organisation.

He was the principal subject of the principal 2013 Cleveland Public Library Russell Atkins retrospective exhibition — and the principal 2017 Cleveland Public Library Russell Atkins celebration of the principal Cleveland post-1950 Black-Bohemian-and-avant-garde poetic-and-musical community.

He was awarded the principal 1978 Cleveland Mayor's Arts Award and the principal 2001 Cleveland Arts Prize for the principal Cleveland Black-Bohemian-and-avant-garde poetic-and-musical canon.

He died at Cleveland on the seventh of June 2024 of natural causes, at ninety-eight.

He is honored here as the co-founder of the Free Lance literary magazine.