He was a professor of English at California State University, Long Beach and the poetry editor of Chiron Review.
He taught at Long Beach State from 1965 to 2007 and was also a part-time lecturer in the University of Southern California's Master of Professional Writing Program.
According to Locklin, Charles Harper Webb defined "Stand-Up" poets as having "the qualities of directness, humor, pathos, performability, accessibility, [and] manliness...."[citation needed]
[citation needed]Locklin wrote a memoir of that friendship, Charles Bukowski: A Sure Bet, that was published in 1995.
Locklin has published over 3,000 poems, works of fiction, reviews and articles that have appeared in numerous periodicals.