Now after being forcefully evicted by what he calls “The Tampa Gestapo” (city inspectors) from his fifty year home in the Tampa crime district and slums, Duane Locke now lives by a lake populated with wild birds in Lakeland, Florida. His Tampa environment was pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers, and the homeless, but now is Snowy egrets, Wood Ibis and Wood Ducks.

Duane has a Doctor of Philosophy degree, specializing in poetry from Donne to Marvell. During his academic career at a less-than-mediocre university where he wasted much of his life he taught varied courses in poetry from Homer to Michael Palmer.

He has had over 5,000 poems published. As of December 2005, 5,620. He has also had over 276 photos published, mainly photos of Tampa trash and Lakeland's mystic flowers. Has had a number of one man art shows and exhibitions of his paintings throughout Florida.

The entire Spring 2004 issue of the magazine Bitter Oleander is devoted to a 92 page interview and sixty of his poems. The book Extraordinary Interpretations by Gary Monroe has a discussion of his paintings.

He is listed in Who's Who in America 2006(Marquis). For more information click “Duane Locke” on the search engine Google.