Background
Lockwood was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Her father, a Naval seaman serving on a nuclear submarine in the Cold War, had a conversion experience after watching The Exorcist and became a married Catholic priest. Lockwood grew up in Saint Louis, Missouri and Cincinnati, Ohio, attending parochial schools there, but never went to college.
Career
She has published two poetry collections and is notable for her transport-genre poetics, including her series of "sexts" and the prose poem "Rape Joke."
During that period, from 2004 to 2011, Lockwood"s poems began to appear widely in magazines including The New Yorker, Poetry, and the London Review of Books. In 2011, Lockwood joined In 2012, small press Octopus Books published Lockwood"s first poetry collection, Balloon People’s Outlaw Black. The Chicago Tribune praised the work for its "savage intelligence." The collection was included in end-of-year lists by The New Yorker and Pitchfork and became one of the best-selling indie poetry titles of all time.
Its iconic cover features original artwork by cartoonist Lisa Hanawalt.
The book"s cover features more original artwork by Hanawalt. Riverhead Books has announced it will publish a memoir by Lockwood in 2016.
Lockwood is notable for her comedy and poetics, including the "sext" form she originated, her association with the Weird movement, and her devout following. The Atlantic Wire put Lockwood on its list of "The Best Tweets of All Time".
She was the only author included twice.
On January 9, 2014, to honor the anniversary of Lockwood"s popular tweet ".parisreview So is paris any good or not," The Paris Review finally issued a review of Paris. In July 2013, current events website The Awl published Lockwood"s prose poem "Rape Joke," which quickly became a viral sensation.
Politics
In 2014, Penguin Books published Lockwood"s second poetry collection, Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals. The New York Times critic Dwight Garner praised the book for its "indelible, dreamlike details." Stephen Burt, writing for The New York Times Book Review, lauded it as "at once angrier, and more fun, more attuned to our time and more bizarre, than most poetry can ever get." The Stranger dubbed Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals "the first true book of poetry to be published in the 21st century." Rolling Stone included Lockwood and the book on its 2014 Hot List, and the New York Times named it a Notable Book.
Views
Quotations:
"casually reawakened a generation"s interest in poetry.".