Acclaimed Poet D.A. Lockhart on Taxidermied Iguanas, Poetry "Shipbreakers", and the Importance of Endings

Poet D.A. Lockhart brings an energy, wisdom, and urgency to his writing as he shares meditations on and explorations of Indigenous identity and history. That energy clearly extends to his work ethic; with seven collections under his belt, he has published a full length collection in each of 2019, 2020, and now 2022 with Go Down Odawa Way (Kegedonce Press, available for pre-order), a powerful book that takes readers deep into both essential cultural memory and evocative contemporary moments. 

Go Down Odawa Way examines the history and present day of the area now known as southwestern Ontario and southeastern Michigan, the territory of the Three Fires Confederacy. Challenging readers to juxtapositions of urban and rural, past and present, Indigenous and settler, the poems contain their own kind of fire, casting light onto the scars the land bears both visibly, in the form of urban settlement, and invisibly.

Weaving in words and place names in Lenape, the Southern Unami dialect, and Anishinaabemowin, that were erased by colonization, Lockhart creates poems that are moving, taut, and infused with a love for the people and land. 

We're proud to welcome D.A. to Open Book as part of our Poets in Profile series, where we ask poets to share their formative experiences as writers, their process and tips, and the favourites that have influenced them over the years.

He tells us how a taxidermied iguana became an important inspiration for one of the poems in Go Down Odawa Way, why he is "obsessed with endings" (in both poetry and baseball), and the strengths and weaknesses he's seen in the Canadian poetry community. 

OB:

What is the first poem you remember being affected by?

DL:

There are degrees to which one is affected by poetry. And I know that I have held some poets’ words close over the years going back until at least my teenage years. Henry Rollins, Leonard Cohen, and Nick Cave were the earliest poetry books I spent my own money on. They were foundational in that they were my entry point into the poetry genre. But the first poem I recall haunting me was Philip Levine’s “Belle Isle, 1949.” This is partially because as someone growing up on the south shore of Waawiiyaatanong, I’ve spent my life looking north to the buildings of Detroit. Belle Isle is the island park between us and the city proper, it is an eastside landmark for us. Here we dream in Detroit. And the poem, like so much of Levine’s work, deals with the industrial miasma of living here. But it does so with the everyday. And that poem deals with how our lives unfold, swimming in the cold water between the debris of our post-industrial disaster, looking for anonymous love. And the ember of warmth that the poem delivers actually still hits me as I talk about it. So, it might have been among the first to affect me, but it still does to this day.

OB:

What has been your most unlikely source of inspiration?

DL:

There is a piece in Go Down Odawa Way called “Midtown Iguana.” And the triggering point for this was an unique one. We were across the Medicine Line in midtown Detroit, wandering towards Third Man Records and wandering around the Cass Corridor there. And out of a parking lot turns a beat-up old Ford Tempo, well bearded hipster at the wheel, and glued in position in the back window of the car a rather large taxidermied iguana, stoically looking out and up, past us. Right there, in that moment I was struck by how much this moment had become Detroit. There it was, vintage store taxidermy, work-a-day sedan, and the changing soul of the city. As the car moved off, past the dog park and through the sewer-steam at the corner, there was a sense that city of my youth had grown into this strange apparition. For the moments it existed in, that iguana and that hipster were everything I could explain about how much the Cass Corridor and the city had changed.

OB:

Do you write poems individually and begin assembling collections from stand-alone pieces, or do you write with a view to putting together a collection from the beginning?

DL:

My mind works in grooves, if you will. Meaning that when I write I often find myself responding to a specific aspect of the world. When I write a stand-alone piece it quickly falls into a groove. There are narratively driven poetry books like Bearmen Descend Upon Gimli which is fundamentally a story and the pieces were individually written to match that story. But for collections such as Go Down Odawa Way, the idea of a unified lyric whole grew out of early pieces. When I looked at the "Mahtenu" (Bad Boys/Detroit Pistons) and "Mpi" (Water) sections I could easily see that they were speaking to the same project, this idea of decolonizing and reclaiming Waawiiyaatanong (Windsor, ON-Detroit, MI). Some of the work fills holes in the project when they are created. And I do have individual, free-roaming pieces. But these most often get thrown into the spare and recyclable work piles.

OB:

What do you do with a poem that just isn't working?

DL:

When it comes to what happens with a poem that isn’t working, I think often of the shipbreakers you see if places like Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. The poems are collected bits of lyricism and moments and metaphors cast into the world. They are regular ships on the sea of literature, I suppose you could say. When they are ugly and not working, I look at them also as their constituent parts I beach them. Tear them open, work through their inner-workings. When I read over a poem and it’s just simply not working, I will mine out of it useful images and moments and use those to craft new work with. This could mean building out a new piece or grafting it onto a developing piece. You could say I manage to recycle key components and throw away what isn’t working. Attachment is not a strength in writing. At least not in my process.    

OB:

What's more important in your opinion: the way a poem opens or the way it ends?

DL:

I am rather obsessed with endings. Maybe it goes back to my love affair with baseball, a sport where closing is a profession and a well-paid one. And perhaps partially it goes back to graduate school and the words of Tony Ardizzone who encouraged me that writing out of a piece is one of the most important moves an author makes. The least kind comment made about a writer back then was “[insert name] couldn’t write their way out of a paper bag.” Meaning that endings seemed to account for a sizeable aspect of what makes a writer skilled. I have always carried with me the belief that this idea that the final moves, the exit moves of a piece, really provide the demonstration of skills. And let’s face it, coming up with ideas or starting points is generally half as difficult of pushing a project or a piece to its finishing line. Both are important, openings and closings. But for good or bad, the attention rests on the closing. Openings draw you in. Closings make the experience of reading memorable, the anchor to return to once you are done.   

OB:

What was the last book of poetry you read that really knocked your socks off?

DL:

I am currently reading Jim Harrison’s Complete Poems from Copper Canyon. But that’s sort of cheating to say that because it’s a lifetime’s work and 900+ pages. So, there is plenty to knock your socks off with Harrison’s work. I mean, he’s Jim Harrison. Randy Lundy’s Field Notes for the Self was definitely one of my most memorable reads in the last year. It was honest like Richard Hugo and enchanting like Gary Synder’s finest work. But he’s speaking about contemporary Indigenous experience and it’s just the sweet spot for poetry and lyric work that hits me the right way.

OB:

How would you describe the poetry community in Canada? What strengths and weaknesses do you observe within the community?

DL:

I would say that Canada isn’t necessarily one single poetry community. I see it as amalgamation of smaller poetry groups and circles. I could say that there are strong poetry communities in places Victoria/Vancouver Island, Calgary, Ottawa, Windsor, Frederickton, London, and of course, Toronto. And there isn’t just one group or communities in those places, but a lot of varied and passionate poetry folks in those places. And I’ve been fortunate enough to find myself able to move between some of these groups and find welcome embrace when doing so. And this diversity of communities is so important and a real strength for the overall poetry community in Canada. These do pose a bit of a problem as well. And I think about the echo chamber aspect of some of these communities. There is not a drive to legitimately criticize or push the emerging work in important or interesting directions. This isn’t a central over legitimate concern or issues in all the poetry communities or groups across Canada. But is a significant weakness. Perhaps the single biggest weakness/issue in Canada’s poetry scene as a whole. 

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D.A. Lockhart is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Devil in the Woods (Brick Books 2019) and Tukhone: Where the River Narrows and the Shores Bend (Black Moss Press 2020). His work has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry in English 2019, TriQuarterly, ARC Poetry Magazine, Grain, Belt, and the Malahat Review among many. He is a Turtle Clan member of Eelünaapéewi Lahkéewiit (Lenape), a registered member of the Moravian of the Thames First Nation, and currently resides at the south shore of Waawiiyaatanong (Windsor,ON-Detroit, MI) and Pelee Island.