Wayde Compton and the Black poets of BC

For a lucky gathering at St. Ann’s Academy on Feb 22, BC author Wayde Compton sat in conversation with Megan Stuart, BC Black History Awareness board member in celebration of Black History Month. Throughout the evening, Stuart guided him through an in-depth reflection on his life, his craft, his books, and his experience as a bi-racial creator in BC.

In 2006, along with David Chariandy and Karina Vernon, Compton co-founded Commodore Books—the first Black-oriented press in Western Canada. He also co-founded the Hogen’s Alley Memorial Project, an organization that promotes the history of Vancouver's Black community.

Compton is also one of the most innovative and celebrated Black Canadian writers of his generation. He has taught at SFU and is currently on the creative writing faculty at Douglas College. As a poet and a historian, he has incorporated BC’s Black history and his reflections about being bi-racial in BC throughout his multi-genre writing.

On this night,  he gave a poignant example of the kind of experiential divide he explores in a poem about a Black panner during the BC gold rush. He reminded his audience that, while most white men panning for gold were simply looking to just make money, Black men in the Cariboo often were trying to find enough gold to buy the freedom of family members back home in the United States.

It was through this exploration of his relationship with other Black authors that Compton coined the term “Afroperipheralism” to describe the fluidity of Black identity and the fact that many Black Canadians grow up knowing more about Black culture from Africa, Black America, and the Caribbean than they do about the Black cultural legacy of their communities.

It was a similar experiential challenge to locate her Black roots in a discernible common origin in Vancouver that Deanna Bowen put into relief in her recent exhibit Conceptions of White at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

The questions of literary and racial ancestry are explored in Compton’s Bluesprint, a ground-breaking anthology that includes the work of Black British Colombian writers such as Nora Hendrix (Jimi’s grandmother), Austin Phillips, Hope Anderson, Yvonne and Rosemary Brown, Lorena Gale, and Mercedes Baines. Each, in their own way, was also dealing with the issues of race and genre. The collection challenged the presumed white universalism of the Canadian literary canon wherein white authors themselves often do not recognize their whiteness as a racial or “ethnic” position.

“When I became curious about Black writing in BC, I realized a proper survey of it had never been done, so I did it,” wrote Compton in his essay, Afrocentripetalism & Afroperipheralism.

Compton had another literary ancestor on Vancouver Island. Fellow Black author, Hopeton (Hope) Anderson, moved to Canada from Jamaica when he was 16. After a brief return trip to the Caribbean, he moved in the early 1980s to Victoria and worked at Munro’s Books.

Hopeton penned Out of the Woods in 1970 and the poetry collection Slips from Grace which features several poems dedicated to BC writers, in 1987. His poetry featured in Poetry from Cascadia and The Capilano Review featured his work in its Fall 2023 issue. Anderson is an assembler of communities. “There is nothing more important than the community you make,” he said.

Anderson opened Octopus Island Books and, in 1984, he organized Victoria’s first Sunfest festival. Margaret Atwood kicked off the festival in July and the program, which highlighted a range of authors such as Amiri Baraka, George Bowering, George Stanley, David Phillips, John Pass, Doug Beardsley, and bpNichol ended with Irving Layton in September.

That original Sunfest may not have had the well-known vibe of Niel Young’s ‘60s Toronto coffee house scene but it put Black authors in dialogue with one another in significant and fruitful ways and in the minds of people who may not have met them otherwise.

In 2010, Anderson opened an arts café called The Well at 821 Fort St in Victoria. The café and market boasted an Indian-Caribbean fusion café, a lounge and reading area, and a retail section for environment-friendly products, new and used books, clothing, and groceries. Local artists were featured on its walls and the space was used for poetry readings, live music, and performances of all kinds. Derek Walcott was the featured artist at its launch which was also attended by writer George Elliot Clarke.

Both Compton and Anderson write the experience of western Black authors in the literary and cultural landscape of Canada, challenging its persistent Canon by acknowledging and celebrating a Black literary lineage and ancestors who used different phenetics to speak a different language.