“You Write because You Have To”: Mobilizing Spoken Word Poetry as a Method of Community Education and Organizing

Abstract

This article draws on data from a larger project that is founded on four narrative case studies that examine the ways in which Black activists in Toronto mobilize their cultural production—namely, spoken word poetry and rapping—in support of their activism, community education, and community organizing work. This particular article is founded on the work of Kofi, a pseudonym for a Toronto activist who mobilizes spoken word poetry as a method of community organizing and as a medium for Black folks to speak to their emotional lives and communal healing practices. As such, the particular narratives shared in this article continue to provide important contributions to the “new era of black words” (Fisher 2003, 362). It is through this creative labor, these activists and cultural producers address the sociology of anti-Black racism that deeply influences the lives of Afrodiasporic people in Canada. They are composers and constructors of strategies and perspectives that are founded within the historical, political, cultural, and social forces influencing Black Canada (McKittrick 2002; Austin 2013). This work continues the conversation about what it means to be Black in Canada, providing counternarratives that stand against the hegemonic and often racist ways Black people and Black communities are imagined in Canada (Austin 2013).