Never one to avoid uncomfortable truths, Welsh writer and photographer Dave Lewis has just released Algorithm. This poetry collection is brutally honest, searing, wide-reaching, and masterful.
The epic opening poem lays bare many of the negative aspects of the technological revolution. It focusses on artificial intelligence (AI), social media, robotics, and the Internet of Things, amongst other developments.
They’ll use Halloween, dead queen, gasoline and obscene
to flog you widescreen, morphine, coffee beans and vaccine
before Frankenstein intervenes with quarantine and guillotine
and then it’s too late to read about it in a time machine magazine
Dave Lewis
Touch some grass
With a rich, illuminating hi-tech rhyme and wordplay onslaught, Dave Lewis paints the Orwellian future waiting for us if we do not make a stand. Particularly concerning is how freely we give away our most valuable possession – our data. We post on Facebook, buy from Amazon, and search on Google, gifting personal goldmines to multinationals. They use this information to sell us more stuff we don’t need and incidentally influence our thinking and behaviour in a covert way.
Dave Lewis suggests that the battle has not only begun but is raging out of control. He offers a solution and advocates reigning in our dependence on the online world, going off-grid and starting to reconnect with nature. As the modern meme goes, go outside and touch some grass.
Change is scary, there’s no doubt about that,
so start with a tech detox, a mind reformat.
Get back to nature, go partly off-grid,
hide from electricity and their takeover bid.
Seek out the secret woods, kill the code,
pull off the main road before you download.
Leave the cult of self, cut the feedback loop,
flee the chicken coop with an intact blood group.
Turn off Alexa, resist the death of culture
as governments try to steal our agriculture.
Dave Lewis
Vantage points
This wide-ranging collection tackles so many pertinent issues. With small boats and asylum seekers in the news every week, Lewis faces mass immigration head-on. Two contrasting views appear in two separate poems, one ‘for’, one ‘against’. But these are not the poet’s opinions, simply astute observations on an impossible situation. An F. Scott Fitzgerald quote at the start of the book sums up the reluctance of many people and politicians to see other viewpoints – arguably the only way real solutions are ever found.
Rebellion is quickly quashed
as the TV screen screams an answer in real-time –
a photograph of a dead toddler
on a European beach.
Dave Lewis
Ain’t got no
Dave Lewis’s collection delves into so many pasts and presents. His innocent upbringing in the Welsh valleys. Travels around Cuba (I heard the music and tasted the rum). The life of the Spanish poet Lorca. Time spent with artists from Tangier. Che Guevara seen through Batman in the 1960s. Welsh independence a la Nina Simone. The beauty of the natural world, and lost love.
I ain’t got no country, ain’t got no houses
Ain’t got no taxes, ain’t got no cash
Ain’t got no work, ain’t got no jobs
Ain’t got no factories, ain’t got no coal
Ain’t got no government
Dave Lewis
While many people glaze over and switch off at the mention of poetry, this book is a wake-up call to other writers as well as a gift to readers. The poetry is easily absorbed and invites us into a story we are part of. And who knows, following his advice will not only save you money but might even save your life when Terminator comes calling for you …
a young men marching
hell before heaven
the grass is red
Dave Lewis
Dave Lewis also runs the International Welsh Poetry Competition – the biggest poetry contest in Wales – and the Poetry Book Awards. The 2023 competition deadline is next Sunday, 4 June, so get writing. The book Algorithm is available in paperback and e-book formats. To find our more about the author’s work visit his website.
Send your poetry via our contact page if you’d like it to be considered for publication in Bylines Cymru on a Welsh Poetry Sunday; all languages welcome.
