features ELLARAINE LOCKIE

features ELLARAINE LOCKIE

"I hated this idea initially; the project was the antithesis of what I love about poetry, which is the freedom to write what and how I want. Although I am driven to follow my own set of rules for free verse, nevertheless, they are my own. Yet this project drew me in somehow, much as the short Japanese forms do – those of haiku, senryu, tanka and haibun. The attitude adjustment required concentration on what I could do rather than on what I couldn't. I viewed it as a healthy exercise, and it was."

~ Ellaraine Lockie

"Polar Visit to Glacier National Park, Montana"

E. A. Hanninen - 2007

Winters in Montana dressed the mountains in polar bear coats when I was a girl growing up there. Even the Big Sky sun couldn't strip them until spring. And every night, outside of a blizzard, the moon bedazzled the prairie's snow banks as though the deposits were billions of diamonds.

Yet all this opulence afforded me the simplest of pleasures. Unlike humid climates that turn bones to icicles (I'd later learn), Montana's crisp cold was the kind that could be insulated with a coat, overshoes, earmuffs and mittens. Thus outfitted, my winter days were filled with tobogganing down hills on our farm, skating on ponds frozen smooth as glass, sledding behind cars driven by my dad, snowball fights and snow angel conciliations – a life as pure as the snowflakes that layered the fir trees.

Later adolescent years weren't much less innocent. Community control was tight, and wild was defined as dating more than one boy at a time, sneaking cigarettes, or having a beer when parents weren't present. Public dances on Saturday nights and steamed-up car windows on gravel roads with steady couples inside were added weekend entertainments, but they didn't replace outdoor sports, whether summer or winter.

I childishly viewed such a magnificent environment as mundane. But after I moved away to Oklahoma, Ohio, California and traveled extensively, Montana became the yardstick with which I measured every other place. Not a one measured up, and it was always winters that added Montana's winning inches.

So, last February I decided to revisit the winter wonderland of my youth. What I found, of course, couldn't possibly equal the model of perfection that had grown to near-mythological proportion in my mind. The family farm had long ago been sold, and global warming had thinned the mountains' coat to a lacy shawl and rendered ice skating unsafe.

But what saddened and shocked me were the state-wide billboards, beside-the-road exhibits, and graphic, controversial TV and radio ads about methamphetamine use. When I investigated the why of it, I learned that methamphetamine use is running rampant in Montana, is in fact an epidemic spreading across the prairies and mountains, with 74% of federal sentences resulting from meth-related crimes when the national average is 15%. It seems that the rural vastness of the state provides perfect places for drug dealers to set up meth labs that go unnoticed unless they blow up, or until they contaminate their surroundings to a noticeable extent.

Would I still like to be in Montana this winter? Absolutely yes. I no longer need my childhood Montana that has clearly become history. I'm incredibly proud of my home state as it is today. It has become the nation's frontline in combating methamphetamine. In addition to the extensive public awareness I noticed last winter, the state's schools and community organizations are being infiltrated with educational meth teams. The following three poems all begin with one of those Montana outback places and are my humble contribution to educate people about methamphetamine, the most additive substance known to man. ~ E.L.

"Crazy Diamond"

Jeff Crouch - 2007

The boarded-up homestead house hadn't had overnight guests
for sixty years who didn't slither on their bellies
Forty miles from the nearest Montana two-bit town
on a trail traveled now by tumbleweeds
lone cowboys and critters

Humanitarian to make meth here instead of contaminating
a populated place Jimmy and Meadow justified
in their gas masks and rubber gloves
Their big hearts beating with the bubbles
belching on top of the brew

Recipes taught in the state penitentiary's chef program
Using lithium battery strips, starter fluid
Sudafed®, drain cleaner and gasoline additives
Combined with anhydrous ammonia
siphoned from a nearby farm's tank of fertilizer

Willy's concern stretched no further than his wallet
his big city plans to thicken it
and the watchdog job on a hill outside the old house
A businessman who knew how to bypass Montana's
two-package maximum on Sudafed® sales
How to avoid explosions, fumes, fires
And how to keep his oily skin free from the rot
starting to spot Meadow's face and teeth

Eve Anthony Hanninen: Did you feel constricted or stimulated by the format of your project requirements, and were you able to use a familiar creative process while working on it?

Ellaraine Lockie: Constricted? Think jail. That's what I thought until I settled down and realized that the imposed part of the project involved only one facet (in my case the destination of the poems), but I was still free to use my own subject and format. I could also easily use my own creative process, one that I teach in a workshop called Picture Book Poetry.

Once I found a subject about which I was passionate, the project took on a life of its own, one that just seemed to mold into the assignment. I found this thrilling. I'm a research nut, so I also loved doing the research on methamphetamine.

EAH: Do you have a person or group of people (writers or other peers, audience, etc.), who gives you regular feedback on your writing?

EL: I've been almost totally an independent poet since I began writing in the genre seven years ago, with the exception of occasional proofing/editing from my children's writing mentors, SuAnn and Kevin Kiser and poetry editors Harvey Stanbrough and Robert K. Johnson, all of whom continue to take me under their literary wings.

It has taken me seven years to feel like joining a critique group because I knew I needed to feel secure with my own voice before I subjected it to so many opinions. I needed to be confident that I could take the group's advice that made sense to me and discard that which didn't. I also needed a good fit for a critique group. I think I have recently found it in Ellen Bass' weekly one in Santa Cruz, CA.

Recently, Ellaraine Lockie has been to Kenya on a poetry fellowship, to Centrum in Port Townsend, WA, for a poetry residency, has received her tenth Pushcart nomination and just won the Elizabeth Curry Award from SLAB at the University of Slippery Rock in PA. She has a Rooftop Chaplet coming out from Adrienne Lewis' series and a chapbook from Patricia Wellingham-Jones' PWJ Publishing.