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.

D.A. Lockhart is the author of multiple collections of poetry and short fiction. His work has been shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award, Indiana Author’s Awards, First Nations Communities READ Award, and has been a finalist for the ReLit Award. His work has appeared widely throughout Turtle Island including, The Malahat Review, Grain, CV2, TriQuarterly, The Fiddlehead, ARC Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry, Best New Poetry from the Midwest, and Belt. Along the way his work has garnered numerous Pushcart Prize nominations, National Magazine Award nominations, and Best of the Net nominations. He is a graduate of the Indiana University – Bloomington MFA in Creative Writing program where he held a Neal-Marshall Graduate Fellowship in Creative Writing. He is pùkuwànkoamimëns of the Moravian of the Thames First Nation. Lockhart currently resides at Waawiiyaatanong and Pelee Island where he is the publisher at Urban Farmhouse Press.

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