D.A. Lockhart

Commonwealth is a profound lyrical meditation on the pre- and post-colonial migrations of the Lenape population throughout the American Midwest, from the watershed of Weli Sipu (the Ohio River) in the Commonwealth of Kentucky to Indiana and beyond. This is a book that transcribes the languages of rivers, highways, rail lines, and buffalo traces. It seeks—or is pushed toward—destinations that are always over the horizon. It is about the fluidity of space and time, and the tangibility of history. As the Lenape journey ever northward and westward, they both create and are created by a collective body of stories: stories of belonging and exclusion, of freedom and confinement, of aspirations and hard truths. Commonwealth explores the ways landscape and people inform one another, and does so in a way that is as clear as a broad Ohio sky.

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116 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

A collection of letter and prayer poems in which an Indigenous speaker engages with non-Indigenous famous Canadians.

D.A. Lockhart's stunning and subversive fourth collection gives us the words, thoughts, and experiences of an Anishinaabe guy from Central Ontario and the manner in which he interacts with central aspects and icons of settler Canadian culture. Riffing off Richard Hugo's 31 Letters and 13 Dreams, the work utilizes contemporary Indigenous poetics to carve out space for often ignored voices in dominant Canadian discourse (and in particular for a response to this dominance through the cultural background of an Indigenous person living on land that has been fundamentally changed by settler culture).

The letter poems comprise a large portion of this collection and are each addressed to specific key public figures--from Sarah Polley to Pierre Berton, k.d. lang to Robertson Davies, Don Cherry to Emily Carr. The second portion of the pieces are prayer poems, which tenderly illustrate hybrid notions of faith that have developed in contemporary Indigenous societies in response to modern and historical realities of life in Canada. Together, these poems act as a lyric whole to push back against the dominant view of Canadian political and pop-culture history and offer a view of a decolonized nation.

Because free double-doubles...
tease us like bureaucratic promises
of medical coverage and housing
not given to black mold and torn-
off siding. Oh Lord, let us sing anew,
in this pre-dawn light, a chorus
that shall not repeat Please Play Again. (from "Roll Up the Rim Prayer")

Reviews
"Rock-solid... full of heartfelt grit and conviction. D.A. Lockhart conjures the world through a catalogue of vivid particulars and a cast of inimitable characters, from Edna Puskamoose, a locally famous Pow-Wow dancer, to James Bond, that internationally notorious 'colonial trickster'. THis is poetry that follows the 'right crooked path' through 'the medicine smoke of history". - Campbell McGrath

Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2020/2021 resource list for grade 12 for English Language Arts and Social Studies.

Caution: Mature, foul language used throughout. The term "Indian" is also used throughout.

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72 pages | 6.00" x 8.75"

Go Down Odawa Way is a poetry collection that explores the physical, historical, and cultural spaces that make up the southwestern traditional territory of the Three Fires Confederacy. This is the region currently inhabited by southwestern Ontario and southeastern Michigan. Individual poems and sections of this collection explore the documented villages, history, and mythologies of the Odawa, Ojibway, Huron/Wendat, and Pottawatomi nations that were lost to the process of colonization and relocation. The project speaks to the history of the region that predates contemporary Canadian and American borders and namings as well as carves out a history that extends back past the mere couple of centuries of European colonization. The narrative focal point of the pieces find their roots in the traditional Lenape vantage point of the author and seeks to draw on the experiences of a modern day urban Indian in connection with the manner that land has changed with non-Indigenous settlement and those that inhabit it.

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76 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

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). Follow acclaimed Moravian of the Thames First Nation poet D.A. Lockhart on this lyrical, epic journey into the unique culture and landscapes that lie just North of Middle Island.

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93 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

Wënchikàneit Visions is a collection of essays that explores the connection to place and history through the lens of absence, forgetfulness, and abandonment. The pieces and collection as whole turn to often overlooked physical spaces of the region around Waawiiyaatanong, and consider their central role in both its past and its future. The pieces are organized as visions occurring in regards to the moons from September (Hunters Moon) until February (Deep Snow Moon) and utilize traditional teachings and myths to contemplate these forgotten or abandoned places.

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70 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

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