Vasily Kamensky

Vasily Kamensky
Portrait of Kamensky by David Burliuk, 1916
Born	Vasily Vasilevich Kamensky 17 April 1884 Perm District, Russia
Died	11 November 1961 Troitsa, Perm Krai
Nationality	Russian
Occupation	Writer, Poet, Artist
Known for	Futurism

Vasily Vasilevich Kamensky (Russian: Васи́лий Васи́льевич Каме́нский; April 17 [O.S. April 5] 1884 – November 11, 1961) was a Russian Futurist poet, playwright, and artist as well as one of the first Russian aviators.

Kamensky was born in the Perm district, where his father was an inspector of goldfields. (The story that he was born on a boat on the Kama River, which he himself promoted and recounts in his memoirs, is untrue.) He lost his parents at the age of five and went to live in Perm with his aunt, whose husband piloted steam tugs on the river; he later wrote "My whole childhood took place in a house on the Kama wharf among tugs, barges, rafts, boats, stevedores, sailors, bargees, captains..."

He left school in 1900, and from 1902 to 1906 worked as a railroad clerk. In 1904 he began to contribute to the newspaper Permskii Krai, publishing poems and notices; at the newspaper he met local Marxists and developed his own leftist political orientation. At this time he also took up acting and traveled around Russia with a theatrical troupe. On his return to the Urals, he became an agitator and led the strike committee at Nizhny Tagil, for which he was sentenced to prison. On his release, he traveled to Istanbul and Tehran; the impressions from this Eastern trip would leave a mark on his later work.

In 1906 he arrived in Moscow, where in 1908 he began working as an editor on the journal Vesna (Spring), meeting important Moscow writers such as David Burlyuk, with whom he studied painting, and Velimir Khlebnikov. Two years later the three collaborated with other writers on the anthology Sadok sudei (A cage [or hatchery] for judges) and formed the proto-Futurist group Hylaea (Russian: Гилея [Gileya]), soon joined by Aleksey Kruchenykh and Vladimir Mayakovsky.