Richard Owens (August 6, 1973) is an American poet. Known also for his work as a publisher and critic, he is founding editor of the literary journal ''Damn the Caesars'' and co-founder of the left-wing punk band Those Unknown. His poetic work appears in several volumes, including ''Delaware Memoranda'' (2008), ''No Class'' (2012), ''Ballads'' (2012; 2015), and the collected volume ''Poems'' (2019). A number of his literary essays, most of which earlier appeared in scholarly and small press publications, are included in the collection ''Sauvage: Essays on Anglophone Poetry'' (2019).

Music and Poetry

From 1989 through 1997 Owens played drums with Those Unknown, among the earliest left-wing

Oi! Oi! is a subgenre of punk rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s. The music and its associated subculture had the goal of bringing together punks, skinheads, and other disaffected working-class youth. The movement was p ...

bands in the US. Founded by Richard and brother Bill Owens in Sussex County, New Jersey, Those Unknown released a number of elapsed play and full length records on a number of independent labels and performed regularly with bands that included Ox Blood, the Wretched Ones,

the Templars The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon ( la, Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Salomonici), also known as the Order of Solomon's Temple, the Knights Templar, or simply the Templars, was a Catholic military order, o ...

, Niblick Henbane, the Trouble, and

the Pinkerton Thugs The Pinkerton Thugs are a punk band from Kennebunk, Maine. History The band has been together since July 1994 under a number of different names but officially became the Pinkerton Thugs in March 1996 (taking their name from the infamous Pinker ...

. Additionally, Owens contributed letters, columns, and feature-length articles to ''

Maximum RocknRoll ''Maximumrocknroll'', often written as ''Maximum Rocknroll'' and usually abbreviated as ''MRR'', is a not-for-profit monthly zine of punk subculture. Based in San Francisco, ''MRR'' focuses on punk rock and hardcore music, and primarily featur ...

'' from 1994 through 1999. Earning his PhD in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he studied under poet-critics

Susan Howe Susan Howe (born June 10, 1937) is an American poet, scholar, essayist, and critic, who has been closely associated with the Language poets, among other poetry movements.

and

Steve McCaffery Steven McCaffery (born January 24, 1947) is a Canadian poet and scholar who was a professor at York University. He currently holds the David Gray Chair at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. McCaffery was born in Sheffie ...

, Owens published his first book-length collection of poems, ''Delaware Memoranda'', in 2008. Subsequent collections include ''Ballads'' (2012) and ''No Class'' (2012), both of which extend from Owens's earlier work in music, balladry, and folk culture. In the Winter 2016 issue of ''Chicago Review'' Owens published "Circuits of Reciprocity: Folk Culture, Class Politics, and Contemporary Ballad Writing," an essay which clearly outlines his position on balladry and folk culture as class-specific, deeply political and socially influential practices.

Editing and Printmaking

As an editor, Owens has followed poet

Barrett Watten Barrett Watten (born October 3, 1948) is an American poet, editor, and educator often associated with the Language poets. He is a professor of English at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan where he has taught modernism and cultural studies ...

's claim, "Editing is act." Focusing on Marxist and other radical poetries, from 2005 onward Owens has edited the poetry and poetics journal ''Damn the Caesars'' under the Punch Press imprint through which he also prints and publishes individual volumes by poets from across the US, UK, and elsewhere. Working in a variety of mediums that include letterpress, silkscreen, and digital printing methods, Owens has designed, hand-printed, and discretely distributed in small runs work by poets that include

Sean Bonney Sean Noel Bonney (21 May 1969 – 13 November 2019) was an English poet born in Brighton and brought up in the north of England. He lived in London and, from 2015 up until the time of his death, in Berlin. He was married to the poet Frances Kru ...

, Frances Crot, David Grundy,

Kent Johnson Kent Johnson (1955 – October 25, 2022) was an American poet, translator, critic, and anthologist. His work, much of it meta-fictional and/or satirical in approach, has provoked a notable measure of controversy and debate within English-languag ...

, Frances Kruk, Luke Roberts, Samantha Walton, and many others. As a printmaker, Owens was formally trained from 1987 to 1991 in commercial art and graphic design at Sussex County Vocational and Technical School, Sparta, New Jersey. From 2006 until 2010 Owens printed alongside poets Michael Cross, David Hadbawnik, Andrew Rippeon, and Kyle Schlesinger on a

Vandercook Vandercook & Sons was a manufacturer of printing press, proof presses, founded in 1909 by Robert Vandercook. They dominated the 20th century proof press industry by developing the first and the most widely used proof presses that did not rely on ...

4 proof press housed at the Center for the Arts, SUNY-Buffalo. Beginning in 2010, Owens has printed on an unmotorized Vandercook 1 proof press using a variety of brayer-based hand-inking methods. His print work is maintained in a number of special collections, including the Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard University, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, and the Poetry Collection at the University at Buffalo.

Selected bibliography

Poetry

* ''Delaware Memoranda.'' Buffalo, NY: BlazeVox, 2008. * ''Embankments , Outtakes , Uppercuts''. Buffalo, NY: BlazeVox, 2010. * ''Ballads''. Buffalo, NY: Habenicht Press, 2012. * ''No Class''. London and Brighton, UK: Barque Press, 2012. * ''Clutch''. No location: Vigilance Society, 2012. * ''Ballads'', 2nd Edition. Buffalo, Toronto, Boston, Cincinnati: Eth Press, 2015. * ''Dead in the House of Pound''. Amsterdam, HL: Crater Press, 2018. * ''Poems''. Buffalo, NY: BlazeVox, 2019. * ''Song of the Constant Sea''. Exeter, UK: Shearsman Books, 2021.

Criticism

* "Circuits of Reciprocity: Folk Culture, Class Politics, and Contemporary Ballad Writing." ''Chicago Review'' 60:02 (2016): 78-90. * ''Sauvage: Essays on Anglophone Poetry''. Buffalo, NY: BlazeVox, 2019.

Selected Discography (Those Unknown)

Elapsed Play

* Those Unknown. 7” ep. 33rpm. Midland Park, NJ: Headache Records, 1991. * Going Strong. 7” ep. 33rpm. Midland Park, NJ: Headache Records, 1992. * Distribution. 7” ep. 45rpm. Sussex, NJ: Pogostick Records,1995.

Long Play

* Those Unknown. CD. Atlanta, GA: GMM Records 1995. * Those Unknown. LP. 33rpm. Dinslaken, Germany: Knock Out Records, 1995. * Scraps. CD. San Francisco, CA: TKO Records, 2003. * Those Unknown. CD. San Francisco, CA: TKO Records, 2003.

Compilations

* ''The Only Spirit is Unity''. 12” LP. Coburg, Germany: Dim Records, 1993. * ''American Headaches, 2''. CD. Coburg, Germany: Dim Records, 1994. * ''Backstreets of American Oi!: Unreleased Anthems''. CD. New York, NY: Sta Press Records, 1994. * ''Limited Options Sold as Noble Endeavors: Benefit Compilation.'' 10” EP. Minneapolis, MN: Half-Mast Recording Corporation, 1997. * ''Punch Drunk III''. CD. San Francisco, CA: TKO Records, 2001. * ''Punch Drunk IV''. CD. San Francisco, CA: TKO Records, 2002.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Owens, Richard 1973 births Living people