Paul db Watkins is a professor of English at VIU. He is also a research team member with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI). He has published widely on multiculturalism, hip hop, Canadian poetry, jazz, DJ culture, and improvisation. As DJ Techné, he has completed several DJ projects that explore the spaces between poetry, hip hop, and jazz.
Part exploration of a key group of Black Canadian poets, part literary, cultural, and musical history, Soundin’ Canaan demonstrates how music in Black Canadian poetry is not solely aesthetic, but a form of social, ethical, and political expression.
Interviewed by Ben Ziegler
Ben Ziegler (BZ): In your book, you say how George Elliott Clark reminds us that words are weapons and that it is the poet’s job to tell the truth in the pursuit of beauty and justice. What are some of the common “truths” that run between the poets you feature in Soundin’ Canaan?
Paul db Watkins (PdbW): Poetry, at its core, is a form of truth-telling—a way of speaking that’s charged with meaning and urgency. Dionne Brand once described poetry as “some way at getting at the core of things,” a kind of perfect speech. That definition resonates deeply with the poets I explore in Soundin’ Canaan—George Elliott Clarke, Dionne Brand, M. NourbeSe Philip, K’naan, and Wayde Compton—who all engage poetry as a means of pursuing both beauty and justice.
While rhetoric and aesthetics are often treated as separate realms (one concerned with persuasion and politics, the other with form and feeling) these poets insist that the two belong together. When read (and sounded) in conversation, their work shows how beauty and justice are not just compatible, but co-constitutive. That, I think, is one of the key truths running through the book: poetry becomes a space where the demands of justice don’t diminish beauty but deepen it.
Another through-line is music. Each of these poets integrates musicality into their work—not only thematically, but structurally, rhythmically. In that sense, they’re not just writing poems; they’re composing soundscapes, using music as both method and metaphor. This interplay between music, poetry, and justice is central to how they imagine freedom, community, and belonging.
It’s a balancing act, certainly—to hold beauty and justice together in the same breath—but, as Audre Lorde reminded us, “poetry is not a luxury.” For many Black Canadian and Afrosporic poets, it’s a necessity, a practice of survival and resistance. Ultimately, I argue that this poetic labour is also a form of citizenship.
BZ: Citizenship, in its diverse forms, occupies a leading role in your book. The Black poets you profile have a lot to say about citizenship. For example, the view that citizenship is to be lived. It’s not a luxury. How do their views on citizenship play out in their approach to poetry and performance?
PdbW: I see poetry-making—poesis—as an active form of citizenship. Citizenship here isn’t just a passport, just as multiculturalism isn’t just a policy. The poets in the book use music as a border-crossing practice, an engaged way of claiming space and belonging. George Elliott Clarke captures this when he writes, “You have heard Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith. / You need no passports.” Wayde Compton, in a poem about Fujianese migrants who arrived in Canada in 1999, points out the hypocrisy in Canada’s self-image as a welcoming haven. He asks, “why is it villifiable for Chinese migrants to hide / in the belly of a dream / now?” Both Clarke and Compton model “sonic citizenship,” a way of thinking about identity and inclusion through sound rather than the state’s definitions. I borrow the term from Vincent Andrisani, who uses it to describe how the calls of ice cream vendors in Havana stitch together the city across political eras. In Soundin’ Canaan, I argue that when we listen closely to these poets—their voices, their cadences, their musical samples—we also participate in this act of sonic citizenship.
BZ: The poets in your book are inspired by music, especially improvisatory music such as jazz. Improvisatory music is hard to become proficient in (I know. I’ve tried.). That said, how can we as a reader become more attuned, more engaged listeners, for the music in the words?
PdbW: Music is central to the book and to the work of all the poets I explore. Austin Clarke, the first Black Canadian novelist published by a mainstream press, once lamented that reviewers often missed the role of music in his writing, and if they missed that, what else did they miss? That insight stayed with me. While music isn’t the only lens I use, it’s a key one, especially improvisation.
My own interest in this began during my PhD at the University of Guelph, where I was part of the Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice Project (now the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation). That community showed me how improvisation could model social change by blending the arts, scholarship, and collaboration. Through ICASP and the Guelph Jazz Festival—where I even served as interim President—I had the chance to learn directly from musicians and poets working in improvisatory traditions.
What I learned is that improvisation is both spontaneous and structured. It requires deep listening and responsiveness in the moment. That’s where readers come in. To hear the “music” in poetry, we must practice a kind of active, layered listening, attending to rhythm, sound, and meaning all at once. Like improvisation, it’s never something we fully master; it unfolds in the moment. That’s part of the beauty. In Soundin’ Canaan, I tried to bring this alive by including links to performances and music so readers could experience that interplay directly.
BZ: The Spotify playlists that you created for each chapter in Soundin’ Canaan are really good. Your playlists include many historically important blues, jazz and hip hop artists, and their recordings. The impressive way you laid out the journey that hip hop has been on over the last half century, from the Bronx to everywhere, was masterful. What should we as listener/reader understand about hip hop music and lyrics, and its social and cultural significance, and its potential to us as citizens of a multicultural country?
PdbW: Thank you—I’m glad that comes through. One of the challenges I faced early on was the limits of the printed page. Including artist names in the margins, alongside playlists, liner notes, and QR codes, was a way to give readers the opportunity to hear and sound the book as they moved through it. I’ve since extended this approach through the website—www.SoundinCanaan.com—which features audio and transcripts of poet interviews, resources mentioned in the book, and newly added materials of interest. There you’ll also find the playlists (now available on both Spotify and YouTube), remixed audio, chapter resources, and additional media and news.
As for hip hop itself, the form has always struck me as profoundly democratic. It emerges from communities historically pushed to the margins, yet it creates a shared space in real time—again, an act of “sonic citizenship.” Take the DJ, for example: they pull from samples across genres, eras, and geographies, layering them into something both dissonant and cohesive. In that act of stitching together difference, you see hip hop modeling what a multicultural society could be.
In an ideal sense, Canada aspires to be this kind of space—a place where different cultures and traditions can rub against each other and produce something vital, unexpected, and collective. But, of course, the reality is more complicated. We often fall short of this ideal, which is why I draw on Cecil Foster’s notion of the comedy and tragedy of multiculturalism: the comedy being those moments of joyful collaboration and creativity, the tragedy being the persistence of inequality and exclusion. Hip hop, with its capacity to hold contradiction and transform it into art, gives us a way to think and feel through both sides of that equation.
BZ: You describe yourself as “a non-Black scholar who identifies with Black politics and unifying strategies.” You are also a Professor of English and DJ, a turntable maestro (I checked you out on YouTube; :-)). What impact has your exploration of Black poetry and music had on your approach to delivering education and music
PdbW: The whole world benefits from Black art and creativity. Full stop. As a lifelong music lover and now as an educator, I’ve benefited immensely from studying and being in dialogue with Black poets and musicians. In many ways, I see myself as a conduit—a kind of DJ. The art historian Robert Farris Thompson once described himself as “a medium, under possession—metaphor, perhaps,” while also pointing to what he called “indestructible lines of happening” that exist beyond the critic’s reach. I find that description resonates: my role is not to claim ownership, but to amplify, connect, and create space for those lines of happening to be heard.
The reality is that academia remains, in many ways, a white space. That was certainly true of my own undergraduate education at UBC, where I encountered very few—if any—Black Canadian texts or histories. That absence fuels a sense of responsibility in my teaching: I want students to have access to the kinds of art and thought that I know can be truly transformational. At the same time, I’m conscious of not wanting to speak over or become a dominant voice in relation to Black artists.
That’s where what I call a “DJ methodology” comes in. Just as a DJ layers and remixes tracks, I try to weave together text, outside soundings, my own insights, and most importantly, the voices of the poets themselves. That’s why including interviews with the poets was central to the book from its earliest conception. It’s a way of ensuring that my role is less about directing and more about mixing, bringing elements into relation so that others can hear, feel, and think with them.
And honestly, I still consider myself a student. The learning doesn’t end. Rather, it keeps evolving, the way any good mix does.
BZ: Soundin’ Canaan covers Black Canadian poets and their works in incredible depth. It can feel overwhelming to someone who is not a big poetry reader; mea culpa. Whether through your book, or beyond, what advice do you have for anyone wanting to better connect with Black Canadian poets and their works?
PdbW: Well, start by reading Black Canadian poets. And even better, go out and listen if you can—attend a book launch, hear the work performed, feel the voice in the room. One of the great things about poetry is that you don’t need to read a whole book at once. You can pick it up, sit with a poem or two, think them through, put it down, and return later. It’s good for both the mind and the spirit.
I know poetry can feel intimidating, and sometimes the language seems difficult to access. But it’s worth wrestling with. The music that surrounds the poets in my book helps create an entry point, giving immediacy and grounding. That’s part of why I built the playlists and the website (soundincanaan.com)—to offer another way in, a sounding that can make the experience more direct and layered.
I also realize my book is dense, and sometimes quite formal in its academic rigor. But the payoff is there: poetry opens new ways of listening, new ways of being together. It cannot, on its own, stop genocide or fascism, but it offers a sonic blueprint for resistance and community. Poetry helps us resist numbness; it’s an antidote to antipathy. And at its best, it reminds us, to riff on the great Sun Ra, that another world is always possible.