Orrick Glenday Johns (1887–1946) was an American poet and playwright who emerged as a pioneering figure in the early modernist free-verse movement. Active in Greenwich Village during the mid-1910s, Johns was closely associated with the artist colony in Grantwood, New Jersey. This vibrant creative community served as the birthplace for Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, an influential avant-garde publication founded by Alfred Kreymborg in 1915 that helped shape the trajectory of American poetry.
Johns's work was featured in the inaugural July 1915 issue of Others, which published his piece "Olives," a sequence of fourteen short poems. Through his involvement with the magazine and the Grantwood colony, Johns became part of a distinguished coterie of writers and artists known as the "Others" group. This circle included seminal figures of modern literature such as William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot, as well as visual artists like Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp.
Beyond his association with the "Others" group, Johns maintained connections with other prominent literary figures of his era, including poets Vachel Lindsay and Sara Teasdale, as well as the dramatist Zoe Akins. His contributions during this formative period of American modernism helped establish free verse as a vital medium for twentieth-century poetic expression.
