Description
Mate Arias is Lewis Buxton’s love song to his friends, a soaring voice attempting to communicate in a masculine world often punctuated by silence or violence. Muscles are torn, crossword clues are pondered, and pints are lifted as the poet attempts to make sense of his friends and himself, and their often clumsy, physical dances around each other.
Under the glares of floodlights and movie screens, with a backdrop of superheroes and zombies, Buxton creates the settings for new versions of male friendships. A poignant and funny exploration of making and maintaining relationships as lives begin to move in different directions, Mate Arias is a unique celebration of the tenderness and love that can be communicated by men.
Praise for Mate Arias
‘Can I tell you that I hugged my knees with glee reading this? Lewis Buxton has played an absolute blinder with Mate Arias. These sonnets, lovingly tuned and turned until they sound like breath, are a series of brilliant salutes to the need – the must – for men to have friends. Through films, football, games, even birdwatching, you see the power of, and the courage it takes, being open and vulnerable to the world. Open to others who are good for a pint, a rant, an arm round the shoulder. God I wish I had these to read when I was 21, they might have saved some years of pain. Become friends with these poems. Your life will thank you.’ ~ Rishi Dastidar
‘In Mate Arias, Lewis Buxton finds a new subject for the love sonnet: the ways of friendship, and in particular how modern British men are friends, now that we’re no longer supposed to be repressed. Summoning rhymes as ingenious and indirect as masculine strategies for intimacy (‘We have just lost a goalkeeper called Kyle. / Seeking same name replacement. Will accept Carl.’), these poems are soft, sharp, serious, funny and (yes) touching.’ ~ Jeremy Noel-Tod
‘There is a quiet yearning inside these moving poems – masculinity unskinned, unpilled, to reveal the small moments of strength and vulnerability, the ‘quietly loud acts’ and need for connection between ordinary men, friends, on the football pitch, the dance floor; at the reassuring touch of each other’s bodies.’ ~ Ross Raisin, novelist
‘There are several poems that speak more specifically to the inner turmoil of finding your footing, as well as sense of belonging’ ~ Ociarna Davy, Redbrick
“Each poem is heliocentric, orbiting around a central idea, often gut-punching in their honesty and adept observation.” ~ Shannon Clinton-Copeland, Ink Sweat & Tears
