Going Off Grid

Award-winning book - Finalist in ‘The Wishing Shelf Book Awards’

This contemporary collection by one of Wales’ most prolific poets focuses on digital capitalism, the negative influence of big tech and our addiction to data. Lewis is deeply concerned with the negative direction mankind is taking and cares passionately about helping to steer us all back to a far simpler, happier place in the far more important offline world. Death and depression, as well as love and nature, are also ever-present themes and the whole package is tightly woven together with some subtle, yet haunting, photographs.

An epic tour de force of modern poetry. The opening poem, (Diet), is reminiscent of T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ and this author’s ‘Roadkill’, but this time focuses on digital capitalism. Lewis is primarily concerned with the madness and addiction pervading our online worlds while we neglect the more important offline. The title is a hope rather than a statement.

The book includes a handful of vignettes and reflections of the author’s immediate locale edited in the style of Julia Margaret Cameron that provide an added texture and insight to the text. Another piece of top drawer writing by one of Wales’s best poets. - Andrew Davies