Ellaraine Lockie

Biography

Ellaraine Lockie is a widely published and awarded poet, nonfiction book author, and essayist. Her newest poetry book is the coauthored Trio from Poetrylandia. Recent work has won the Poetry Super Highway Contest, the Nebraska Writers Guild’s Women of the Fur Trade Poetry Contest, New Millennium’s Monthly Musepaper Poetry Contest, and First Place in the Artists Embassy International Dancing Poetry Contest.

Her nonficiton book, DAIRY DELICIOUS: High Calcium Cookbook/Kitchen Companion, has just been released from St. Johann Press. Ellaraine has authored fourteen poetry chapbooks, the most recent of which is Sex and Other Slapsticks which has been published by Presa Press. Earlier collections won Poetry Forum’s Chapbook Contest Prize, San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival Chapbook Competition, Encircle Publications Chapbook Contest, Best Individual Poetry Collection Award from Purple Patch magazine in England and the Aurorean’s Chapbook Choice Award. Her poems have found their ways onto broadsides, buses, rented cars, bicycles, cabins, greeting cards, key chains, bookmarks, mugs, coffee sack labels, church bulletins, radio shows, and cable TV as well as into hundreds of national and international journals, magazines and anthologies.

Thirty of her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and she has received multiple writing fellowship awards from both Summer Literary Seminars and Centrum Literary Residencies. Ellaraine teaches writing workshops and serves as Poetry Editor for the lifestyles magazine, LILIPOH. 

Inspiration for writing the winning poem “An American Haibun”

I grew up in the small wheat farming community of Big Sandy, Montana, which sits on the prairie at the base of The Bear Paw Mountains. I found entertainment and excitement in the animal life, breathtaking beauty and peace in the landscape plus drama in the extreme changes in weather. Consequently, I’ve always looked to nature for balance and guidance. The thrill of finding a large flock of parrots in my front yard trees one morning rerouted my daily neighborhood walk to my driveway, as I couldn’t bear to leave the parrots. I had just received worrisome health news, but as I experienced the songs, colors and antics of these spectacular birds who stayed a good twenty minutes, my anxiety eased and pretty much flew away with the parrots when they left. From gratitude I wrote this poem.

-Ellaraine Lockie