Poetry
D.A. Lockhart
D.A. Lockhart is the author of nine books, including Breaking Right (Porcupine’s Quill, 2021), Bearmen Descend Upon Gimli (Frontenac House, 2021), and this City at the Crossroads (Black Moss Press 2017). His work has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry in English 2019, TriQuarterly, ARC Poetry Magazine, Grain, Belt, and the Malahat Review among many. His work has garnered multiple Pushcart Prize nominations, a Ray Souster Award Shortlist, and a ReLit Award Shortlist. Lockhart is a graduate of the Indiana University-Bloomington MFA in Creative Writing where he held a Neal-Marshall Fellowship in Fiction. He is a Turtle Clan member of Eelünaapéewi Lahkéewiit (Lenape), a registered member of the Moravian of the Thames First Nation. His turtle clan ancestors left their Opèksipu (White River) homelands of Central Indiana for their current Ontario home. As a former resident of the Irvington Neighbourhood of Indianapolis, he knows the spirts of the city will bring him back. He is the publisher at Urban Farmhouse Press and the Poetry Editor at the Windsor Review.
2024 Poetry Shortlist: North of Middle Island
Journey to the southernmost tip of the territories held by Canada. North of Middle Island opens with a collection of individual poems that capture the spirit of the relatively isolated, sparsely populated community of Pelee Island. The pieces explore contemporary Indigenous experience in the natural and built environments of the island and surrounding waters.
The book concludes with an epic, “rarely true” narrative of modern-day warriors, told in traditional Anglo-Saxon style-a new Lenape myth of how Deerwoman (Ahtuhxkwe) comes to Pelee Island. The events of this epic tale are loosely based on the infamous professional wrestler and actor Rowdy Roddy Piper’s time on the island and Wrestlemania XII, Piper’s notorious “Backlot Brawl” with fellow wrestler Goldust (Nkuli Punkw).
2022 Fiction Shortlist: Breaking Right
In D.A. Lockhart’s Breaking Right ordinary Hoosiers experience extraordinary moments that reveal the complicated correlations between their beliefs, their relationships and the land beneath their feet.
