the poetics of shite

In a gesture of friendly plagiarism - see the recent and magnificent http://peckhaminfurs.blogspot.com/2009/03/big-shit-in-peckham.html - I post 3 pictures of the shat-on pavements of Walworth, southeast London (an area named not, apparently, after the murderer of Wat Tyler before London Bridge in 1381 (the vile Lord Walworth he thrust a blade into the hero's heart) but it means 'welsh wood' or something hmmm). A little nexus of poo has emerged over the last week. At the Canting Academy reading last Thursday, Vahni Capildeo very accurately described the persons of this nation as walking "with dog-beshitten and street-wetted footwear into their private living spaces" - vide pic no 2 below and the probable teleology of that trainer. A conversation then ensued between myself and Harry Gilonis (as Harry Godwin rightly asserts at http://thedailyfilth.blogspot.com/2009/04/when-harry-met-harry-or-recrossing-line.html) on the late Ivor Cutler's habit of drawing chalk flowers around the offending mounds to highlight his annoyance. A few years ago in the preface to my book stretchers (oh yes) I talked about Iain Sinclair's complaint that the Isle of Dogs contained no graffiti and suggested he look at the smears of dogshit there as a kind of script, one that Bob Cobbing would certainly have been happy to perform. From the first stretcher: "for graffiti there's dogshit it's a kind/of writing can be scried an inventory/taken of say colour consistency..." Alas I failed to follow up my comments but I would suggest that the crap on our paths take its place as a part of the general economy of signification. The examples below are all shapely - moreso once a foot or pram wheel has slid through as in pic no 1 - as well as colourful and smelly though these latter are surely more indicators of the present state of the dogfood industry.