Performance Bond

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta. He is
the author of Calling Texas, Earth Prime, and Mind the Gap.

Wayde Compton’s work shows tremendous diversity and energy. He is a
good example of a “fusion poet,” one who can draw together elements
of high culture and low, literary precedents, and the spoken word. Found
texts jostle with concrete poems and transcripts of oral history.

Compton is the editor of Bluesprint: Black British Columbian Literature
and Orature. Orature is a new term for “oral literature,” and
Compton is a fine practitioner of it. This generously conceived
collection of his own work includes a CD, “Reinventing the Wheel,”
so that the reader can be a listener as well. The recorded performances
were created with DJ techniques—mixes that required “two turntables,
two dub plates, and various prerecorded vinyl, which [he] mixed live at
venues in Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary in 2001–2002.” The
technical virtuosity often supports strong positions about race, but
some of it exists for its own sake as a source of pleasure.