Poems From The Streets of Shittsville is a collaborative work between quaternion and Ken Scott. The collection explores social and political themes resonant with impoverished, inner-city communities as well as larger, nationwide sociopolitical concerns. From Fuck Alley to the Hallelujah Highway, Shittsville will pull no punches on the rough roads and mean streets of Shittsville, California.
The idea for the collection was born of a joking response to Rick Lupert--host of the Cobalt Poets Open Mic--when he asked "Where are you tuning in from." The response given "from the middle of Shittsville" inspired Ken Scott to add "and I'm tuning in from Fuck Alley, Shittsville." As more members of the community added streets to Shittsville, the idea of Poems from the Streets of Shittsville sprung out of the humour.
Welcome to the gauntlet. Enter Shittsville will not apologise, will not hold back, but its bleak and cynical howl will grab the reader by the hair and plunge them face-first into the overflowing toilet bowl of everything no one wants to see. The reader will see streets with no street lights that stink of piss and litter, politicians with naked ambitions, hate preachers at the pulpit of the almighty dollar astroturfing greed behind cardboard cutouts of desecrated gods, the dead and the dying cast in broad daylight on sidewalks strewn with syringes and sanctimony. There is no light here. Only the darkness of forgotten and forsaken people and the bootstrapper paradox of wrath and apathy.