pauldbwatkins Event, Literature

Soundin’ Canaan Book Launches!

𝕊𝕠𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕚𝕟’ ℂ𝕒𝕟𝕒𝕒𝕟: 𝔹𝕝𝕒𝕔𝕜 ℂ𝕒𝕟𝕒𝕕𝕚𝕒𝕟 ℙ𝕠𝕖𝕥𝕣𝕪, 𝕄𝕦𝕤𝕚𝕔, 𝕒𝕟𝕕 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕚𝕫𝕖𝕟𝕤𝕙𝕚𝕡 is officially out! Seeing it in physical form is truly special. Music weaves through the book, and just in the Prelude, I reference Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” Nina Simone’s “Mississippi G**dam,” and Oscar Peterson’s “Hymn to Freedom.” Get your copy today!

Nanaimo Book Launch, Feb 6th, 2025

The first launch will take place on February 6th at The Vault Café (499 Wallace St) and will feature poet and musician Sonnet L’Abbé (Sonnet’s Shakespeare) and Nanaimo Poet Laureate Neil Surkan (Unbecoming). I’ll also be performing remixed versions of sections from the book. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and the readings will run from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. Come by and grab a signed copy!

Victoria Book Launch, March 13, 2025

A second launch will happen in Victoria on March 13th at Paul Phillips Hall (1928 Fernwood Road). This event will feature poet Wayde Compton (Performance Bond, The Outer Harbour, Toward an Anti-Racist Poetics). Doors open at 6:30 p.m., with an open mic at 7:00 p.m. Featured readings and an interview will start at 7:30 p.m.

Local folks: I hope to see you at one of the events! Also, for any local Nanaimo folk, you can grab a copy of the book from @windowseatbooks.

Warmly,
Paul

pauldbwatkins Literature, Poetry

Preorder Soundin’ Canaan at 50% Off Today!

Hi friends,

I’m thrilled to announce that my debut academic book, published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press, will be released on January 21, 2025! The Press is currently celebrating its 50th Anniversary with a sale, so you can preorder the book at 50% off until December 15 using the code WLUP50. (Canada and US only).

Using a DJ Methodology, I blend close readings of poetry, music, cultural and literary history, along with interviews with the poets featured in the book. It also includes an accompanying soundtrack of playlists to enhance your reading experience, and a website is forthcoming.

You can learn more and preorder the book here: https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/S/Soundin-Canaan

All my best,
Paul db Watkins

Reviews

“Soundin’ Canaan is an imaginative, innovative, original, and immensely generative study of the relations that connect Canadian Black poetry to music, multiculturalism, social membership, and citizenship.”
–George Lipsitz, University of California-Santa Barbara, author of The Danger Zone Is Everywhere (University of California Press, 2024)

“In Soundin’ Canaan: Black Canadian Poetry, Music, and Citizenship, Can-Lit-Crit scholar Paul db Watkins “brings da noise,” reading through Afro-Can poets to stress that our concern is to remix, adapt, sample, and echo African Diasporic literary and musical greats in confraternity or confrontation with the Bards of the Great White World—and of the Great White North.

Watkins is himself an adept DJ, scribing a bluesaic (not prosaic) and a Rap-sodic exploration of how a quintet of Black Can poets kick-start the toppling of Plato and his reactionaries, who dread that any shift in musical taste is equivalent to an insurrection of the masses. Well, so be it! Watkins is the polyphonous polymath, not just reading the words, but listening for and sounding the Rastafarian aesthetics that trouble Luciferian ethics. In short, Watkins reads Black Can poems as mosaics of transgressive conjunctions. He is himself the Sage of the Remix, and intersperses his prose with shout-outs to YouTube videos and Spotify tracks of pertinent artistes. His playlist? Shakespeare and Shad; Ma Rainey and Martin Luther King. You read this book; you’re now in the know. Why? Cos now ya’s in the groove….”
—George Elliott Clarke, author of Whiteout: How Canada Cancels Blackness (Véhicule Press) & J’Accuse…! (Poem Versus Silence) (Exile Editions)

pauldbwatkins fiction, writing

In a moment (flash fiction)

Swirling the sugar round her cup with her spoon she looked up at me with her pearly smile. God dammit she’s beautiful. I hate it when you can’t remember someone’s name, especially since she just told me hers two minutes ago. Ten minutes ago I had saved this girl’s life. That’s right. She had stepped out onto the road anticipating the walk sign. At that same moment a cabby darted through the intersection racing the millisecond between yellow and red. Primal instinct kicked in. Swiftly I reached out and pulled her back. Cars honked their disapproval at the cab’s recklessness. The businessman beside me sounded a racial epithet about cabbies. If you could slow the alacrity of the scene down it would appear as some operatic moment in a movie. I was the hero. I had never been the hero. Our eyes made contact and propelled me into the present.

…

“It looks like you’re deep in thought. I don’t think I can ever repay you for saving my life,” said the girl.

“Well this coffee is a good start,” I joked.

“You must save distressed girls all the time.”

Was she distressed?  The frightening thought entered my skull: maybe she wanted to be struck by that cab.

“No, actually, you’re the first.”

“You have nice eyes.”

Was she flirting with me? She must have noticed the wedding ring on my finger.

“Thank you. So do you.”

Her eyes were a mesmerizing hazelly-green with a certain sadness to them. I had the impulse to invite her back to my place, only two blocks away. How quickly life can change. Some say the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand lead to WWI. At any moment a nuclear bomb could wipe out an entire city. Dinosaurs went about their routines the day the meteor hit. Someone must have skipped work to play hooky the day the planes crashed into the Twin Towers. I was going for a walk to buy a loaf of bread and now I was on the verge of an affair. It would be easy since I worked from home and my wife did not. I felt like I was in some bad made-for-TV movie.

“Do you live around here?”

“Just a couple blocks away.”

Invite her back for a drink! screamed my dick.

She continued. “You saved my life today. The way I see, I’m yours for the day.”

I boyishly smiled and gestured for our bill.

“I’m going to freshen up,” she said leaving the table.

Was I really going to cheat on my wife? My cell had been incessantly buzzing from a voice message, likely from my wife. I listened to the message. It ecstatically said to grab some champagne and some sparkling juice for her. Could she be pregnant? We had been trying for six months now. Was I going to be a father? What a fucking crazy day.

The girl with no name returned from the bathroom.

Photo by Paul db Watkins.