And because they didn’t know the ramifications of what they were doing:
middle aged women in communities.
Despair comes from amnesia
She made you do it /
Send an email in Welsh to robot replies /
Avge tiktok user spends 90 mins on their phone every day – how great is this garden – darn Plastic fel bloc lego /
The woman in the green dress /
Who is she /
Despair comes from amnesia /
Take beta blockers /
Platitudes in a plastic
Paragraph pitch what do they want /
Need /
Not an ‘issue’ /
Let it all out you /
Sing your note /
This flame I have /
Peppering with /
SLIPPAGES + FLOOD /
Whales washed up /
One hat very precise one hat very creative /
Surely understanding real love counts /
You’re wrong /
A small peasant people cannot produce fine art /
‘Cenedlaethol’ is really boring /
Dyma ni yng Nghymru /
Can we bring new (old) value systems into being?
You don’t italicize pasta /
That pleases me /
A dim digon o Gymraeg.
Cyfalafiaeth wrthnysig y parlyrau cefn /
Unusual things /
Alexa imagine /
Every medium sized car crash /
Narrow and deep /
River turns from being /
About seduction /
The attraction /
To the fear /
Why does it make you feel beautiful?
I don’t /
Want books about really thin women /
Attention more beautiful /
It will collapse your world /
Puncture dialogue /
Make you feel /
Uncomfortable /
If you met her /
Crying on the train /
You would admire /
again + again + again /
The dramas of your life /
Use your structure to feed the narrative /
Plastic mat like a gridlock /
Fiction has to be finished /
Find
your
restrain
your
what
am I feeling for
hard hope
jigsaw.
In the end, all art is about survival.
When the light of day is coming up.
Esyllt Lewis is one of the Hay Festival 2025 Writers at Work, a creative development programme for emerging Welsh talent at Hay Festival Hay-on-Wye with the support of Literature Wales and Folding Rock, funded by Arts Council of Wales.
She is an artist and translator from Craig-Cefn-Parc, who explores the relationship between visual and verbal languages. She has performed her work as Radio Cymru's Poet of the Month, at Aberystwyth Poetry Festival, at Transpoesie Festival, Brussels, and as part of Ulysses Shelter’s translation residency in Valetta, Malta. She won the Ifor Davies Award in the Pontypridd Eisteddfod in 2024 for her performance, ‘Blobus a Phryderon Eraill’ (Jellyfish and Other Worries). Her Welsh adaptation of Anthony Shapland's novel, Lan Stâr (A Room Above a Shop) is being released in the Spring, and she is also co-editor of Cyhoeddiadau'r Stamp.