D.A. Lockhart : coda

How does a poem begin?

A poem begins in a moment. For me, I describe the moment as being akin to a Buddhist satori, a moment of realization. I need to experience something that is concrete and connects me to the under lying beauty or wonder of Creation. So a poem begins for me in experience. From there it moves into an image. One that I fine tune and that becomes emblematic of that moment of realization. The beginning comes from a Blakean nation of seeing the universe in a grain of sand and a need to share that vision and that moment with an audience. 

D.A. Lockhart : part five

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?

When things get really in need of getting a kick start, I absolutely always have a handful of works and authors that I return to. The first swipe through reading is usual the classics of Issa, Buson, and Basho. Haiku as a form helps to centre me on the image and the moment that I believe to be at the heart of all successful poetry. Masterfully executed haiku helps to develop approaches to the world my poetic self needs to function. From there it is usual to Richard Hugo (Lady at the Kicking Horse Reservoir), Gary Snyder (Regarding Wave & Axe Handles), John Steifler (The Grey Islands), Campbell McGrath (Seven Notebooks) and the collected works of Simon J. Ortiz. These last books and writers help to guide the form and lyricism of the core image and moment ideas that haiku guided me. You could say I have a lot of voices in my head when it comes to renewal in my artistic practice.

D.A. Lockhart : part four

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

I’ve been blessed to have met and worked with a good number of highly accomplished poets from both my graduate school days and my professional life. Campbell McGrath provided some of the absolute best guidance with some of my early poetic work. He pointed me through the notion of the lyric consciousness of a poem and how the moment within the poem must live and breathe. Maura Stanton and Catherine Bowman had massive influence over me as a young poet. Poets that I’ve met only through their work have as been absolutely crucial to sense of poetry include Gerald Vizenor, Armand Garnet Ruffo, Natalie Diaz, and Leslie Marmon Silko.

D.A. Lockhart : part three

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?

It’s honesty. Fiction and prose essays are much more contrived forms of expression. There is a lot more balancing in those structures of writing that require the writer to wrap truth in such a manner as to fit within its constraints. Those same constraints weaken the experiential aspect of the poem as felt by the reader. A poem is an event and very few types of writing outside this form can accomplish that same sort of thing.

D.A. Lockhart : part two

How do you know when a poem is finished?

I am of two minds on this. The first being, a poem is done when I’ve got sick of working on it. And oddly enough, this does happen fairly often enough. The second mind being that I am not all too sure that a poem is ever done. The great American Pacific Northwest poet Richard Hugo  proclaimed that he was always writing the same poem. And this was a good thing. I could argue that’s the case with me. A lot of my work operates in a sort of overarching discussion of decolonization and often engages the concrete in a way that shows off its multitudes. Meaning a poem that looks at cattails or ahpawiak has so many was of exploring its connections to creation that it requires more than one poem could every hope to. In this second way, I might be trapped in that Wallace Steven’s poem without any hope of escape.

D.A. Lockhart : part one

D.A. Lockhart is the author Devil in the Woods (Brick Books, 2019) and Breaking Right (Porcupine's Quill, 2020). His work has appeared widely throughout Turtle Island including Best Canadian Poetry 2019, The Malahat Review, Grain, CV2, TriQuarterly, The Fiddlehead, and Belt. He is pùkuwànkoamimëns of the Moravian of the Thames First Nation. Lockhart currently resides at Waawiiyaatanong where he is the publisher at Urban Farmhouse Press.

What are you working on?

I just put in the finishing round of edits on my short fiction collection, Breaking Right, that is due out this fall with Porcupine’s Quill. It is short fiction set in Indiana that uses a lot of Hoosier folk tales as its basis. Poetically, the final touches are going into my sixth full poetry collection, Go Down Odawa Way. A decolonial homage to the southern Three-Fires traditional territories. Wrapping up the Canada Council Grant for that in conjunction with the final edits. And I am very early into a new poetry manuscript, Commonwealth, that explores borders and migrations in area of the American Midwest.