Lochhead's best-known book, "High Marsh Road", a collection of 122 short poems chronicling his daily walks across the Tantramar Marshes in southeastern New Brunswick, earned him a nomination for a Governor General's Award in 1980. In 2005, when "High Marsh Road/La Strada di Tantramar" was awarded the Carlo Betocchi International Poetry Prize, Lochhead became the first non-Italian writer to win it. He also received the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in English-language Literary Arts in 2001 and the following year, became the first poet laureate for the town of Sackville, New Brunswick where he had lived since joining the faculty at Mount Allison University in 1975. The first 30 poems in "High Marsh Road" are posted on telephone poles leading from Sackville's main downtown intersection toward the marshes that so often stirred "the red sea of his singing".