A seasonal dispatch of happenings is in order. Because really, the social media following can miss most of the point. In the answer to the rarely asked question “What D.A. Lockhart is up to?” let’s start with the new work. Pieces that are before us and those that shall be entering the world in fairly short order. And if 2024 has been light on new work into the work, then the coming months will seen a definite surge in new works. We have another multiple book year ahead, one that spans the width of the Canadian landscape.
Coming out from Frontenac House, “Walking the Line: The Al Purdy Poems,” marks a return of my work to the renowned Alberta-based publisher. The Raymound Souster Award Finalist Bearmen Descend Upon Gimli found its home with the press back in 2020. Returning to work famed poet and editor Micheline Maylor-Kovitz as book editor sets the hype for this new collection at the peak of the Rockies themselves. The collection comes out of a spring 2021 Al and Eurithe Purdy A-Frame Residency and follows the manner that seminal Canadian Poet Al Purdy crafted masks and reality into a truly rooted and central poetics to Anglophone Canada. As the book is in its early editing stages, the title is still fluid in form. But it will be joining the celebrated Western Canadian literary publisher’s fall Quartet. The collection explores the masks that writers use, the relationships they form in doing so, and most notably how a specific place holds medicine that generates great writing. With lyric deviations into classic James Bond, anime’s Kill la Kill, and the works of Charles Bukowski all with an uniquely contemporary Indigenous vision this new work will be a breath of fresh air for the Canadian Literary elite. What you will be left is a decolonial vista of one of Canada’s defining literary figures.
Commonwealth, first purposed in grant for in the fall of 2019, has reached the long sought point of becoming a book. My work returns to its home at Kegedonce Press for my third full poetry collection with the fine folks up Saugeen Territory way. Building off the momentum of Trillium Book Award Finalist and Indiana Author’s Award Shortlisted North of Middle Island, this collection returns to the physical spaces of the American Midwest for a de colonial romp across highways, waterways, and traces as the land finds its original songs and histories of the Lenape, Mymaki, and Shawnee peoples. You might recognize some the poems from being out in the wild. “Hussain Recites Ginsberg while Driving Down Kedzie” appears in Best Canadian Poetry 2025 (originally Event Magazine) and “Blue Hole Outside Prairietown, Indiana” from the Spotlight on Poetry by the Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. These poems and this project have been in development for a couple of years now. And I am thrilled to be putting this work together for a fresh mediation on the Indigenous nature of the American Midwest and how borders damage us all. An new poetic return to my Hoosier homelands.
If it is new work from me that you are looking for right now, then look no further than Zegaajimo. This absolute beauty of a collection is filled with all new Indigenous horror fiction. Design and published from Kegedonce Press, this new anthology features new fictions for the winter storytelling season from some of the most renowned Indigenous writers working today. Nathan Adler and Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm took up editing and assembling this surefire classic. My piece, “The River Gives What the River Gives,” is included alongside new work by Richard Van Camp, Waubgeshig Rice, Dawn Dumont, Francine Cunnigham, Drew Hayden Taylor, and many more. Dark, at times absurd, and carrying strength of voice from across Indian Country this will be one of the collections you don’t want to miss out on.
Where would one be as a writer without mentioning the work that is finding a home in time. The reading schedule has been fairly full over the last few weeks. Which means reviews a plenty are likely forthcoming from me. But here are the recent highlights: Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds is an excellent romp in the survivalist in the woods view. Set during the early days of colonial arrivals to Turtle Island, the novel focuses on a runaway English servant girl and how she comes to see herself and her colonial society’s problematic roots while negotiating the natural world that. It is a survival tale and more. Imagine a modern day Robinson Crusoe with much, much higher stakes and poetic writing. River Mumma by Zalika Reid-Benta is an absolute must read for lovers of myth and the physical spaces of Toronto. I adored this book and it’s mixture of Jamaican folklore and the Toronto’s folklore. This is likely one of the finest city novels I’ve come across in years and one of the strongest I’ve come across of the city of Toronto.
And Dropping Next Week (November 20, 2024)
