In Performance Bond, Wayde Compton, among the most progressive and experimental poets in Canada, defiantly and eloquently confronts the globalization and commodification of Black culture.

With poetry inspired by the insistent cadences of hip-hop and jazz, Compton fuses language, history, and contemporary Black politics. He deals with Black diaspora at the outer rim of geography and culture, concerned with the legacy of the slave trade, the memory and origins of hip-hop, and the ramifications of urban renewal on North America's inner cities.

Performance Bond, is supplemented with a CD that is a recording of Compton's musical performance of one of the book's sections, "The Reinventing Wheel," featuring the turntable mixing of his reading of the poem, prerecorded on vinyl, with musical beats, breaks, and samples.

Wayde Compton is the author of two books of poetry, 49th Parallel Psalm (Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize finalist) and Performance Bond. He also edited the anthology Bluesprint: Black British Columbian Literature and Orature. His non-fiction book After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing, and Region was shortlisted for the City of Vancouver Book Award. His first work of fiction, The Outer Harbour, will be published in fall 2014. Wayde is the director of the Writer's Studio and the Southbank Writer's Program at Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies. He lives in Vancouver.

Wayde Compton's profile page

There is a hip hop flavour and cadence to these pieces, to be sure, but it's hip hop written by a bloody genius, or at least someone with a dizzying command of the language.
-Vancouver Sun

The flexibility with which this book approaches both poetry and race deserves special attention. The way Compton sings the strange blues of our time will keep readers humming and thinking at the same time.
-Monday Magazine

In Performance Bond, Wayde Compton is on a fabulous roll of his own.
-Toronto Star

The concept of Performance Bond is exciting.
-Georgia Straight