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Boy in Various Poses
Boy in Various Poses, a debut collection of poems from Lewis Buxton, explores all the different types of boy you can be – tender, awful, thoughtful, vulnerable. Here, a maelstrom of mental health, male bodies, and sexuality is laid bare with wit and curiosity, and the complexity and multiplicity of gender itself is revealed.
The boy in question is often shapeshifting, slippery, unreliable, close yet never quite in focus, moving too fast to pause and take a breath - yet Buxton studies these boys, their bodies and behaviours, with a disarming intimacy and precision. These poems are provocative, nuanced and often laugh-out-loud funny, shining with a naked, shameless brilliance.
The boy in question is often shapeshifting, slippery, unreliable, close yet never quite in focus, moving too fast to pause and take a breath - yet Buxton studies these boys, their bodies and behaviours, with a disarming intimacy and precision. These poems are provocative, nuanced and often laugh-out-loud funny, shining with a naked, shameless brilliance.
- GenresPoetry
72 pages, Paperback
Published May 1, 2021
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23 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 23, 2022
Toxic masculinity sucks. Fortunately, Lewis Buxton is here to tear it to pieces with delicacy, humour and tenderness. Some excerpts:
A boy is a poet with clean skin & combed hair & no neuroses, only the work, managing to apply himself to it fully, understanding the fluidity, managing a balance between art & financial viability
*
the boy fighting ghosts // in his back garden will never know // that his punches // have landed in my poem // in the skin & bone of winter // dressed in string vest & cotton shorts // he works the body of nothingness
*
A boy sees a ghost and it is his father, his grandfather, his uncle, his brother, his friends, his bullies, his maths teacher, his reflection, all making faces through the window. They seem to be getting closer & closer, the boys he knew from school who used to get their dicks out in English, died, went to heaven, now wanking ectoplasm all over some seraphim
I am an absolute sucker for some fun poetry with something to say. Would recommend.
A boy is a poet with clean skin & combed hair & no neuroses, only the work, managing to apply himself to it fully, understanding the fluidity, managing a balance between art & financial viability
*
the boy fighting ghosts // in his back garden will never know // that his punches // have landed in my poem // in the skin & bone of winter // dressed in string vest & cotton shorts // he works the body of nothingness
*
A boy sees a ghost and it is his father, his grandfather, his uncle, his brother, his friends, his bullies, his maths teacher, his reflection, all making faces through the window. They seem to be getting closer & closer, the boys he knew from school who used to get their dicks out in English, died, went to heaven, now wanking ectoplasm all over some seraphim
I am an absolute sucker for some fun poetry with something to say. Would recommend.
February 9, 2023
What boys go through to become men. It’s all here, the doubts, insecurities, bodies, jealousies, wildnesses, sex, laughs, violence and even love. This is not a collection but a sequence of vivid truths, like some weird, fractious, rite of passage, poetic novel. This is a seriously good debut book. Lewis Buxton’s performance of this work is a one man show not the be missed.
January 7, 2026
Powerful stuff. These boys are birds, horses, tender, confused, musing, rough, pushing, yearning to be friends, fathers, though very rarely lovers... (which is curious, but refreshing.)
Buxton loves him those birds and uses the imagery to great effect in many of these poems (‘Partridges’ is appropriately sobering, ‘Cuckoos’, who are in the penalty box, quite delightful, etc). He is also fascinated by (the fascination with) the body and its unpicking and dissection — not only in the obvious ones like ‘Taxidermy’, ‘Shaving Tips’, ‘Field Dressing a Rabbit’ or the strikingly mechanical ‘Boy, Undressing’, but also in the warp and weft of the even more subtle and profound ones like ‘Tense’ and ‘Parliament Hill Lido’, which might be my favourites.
There is lot that is quotable!
And only a few mis-steps, like ‘Freddie the Lion’ (a valiant and quirky attempt to cast light on an eccentric historical figure through his unrepentant killer’s dramatic monologue, that was stuffed with a checklist of “images and phrases I associate with Christianity, I think”, many rather naff or inapt, including several Catholic references entirely irrelevant to the Anglican vicar in question…) or the final poem, ‘A Boy Gets Married’, which I didn’t really get, but I guess that’s more on me than on the poet.
Buxton loves him those birds and uses the imagery to great effect in many of these poems (‘Partridges’ is appropriately sobering, ‘Cuckoos’, who are in the penalty box, quite delightful, etc). He is also fascinated by (the fascination with) the body and its unpicking and dissection — not only in the obvious ones like ‘Taxidermy’, ‘Shaving Tips’, ‘Field Dressing a Rabbit’ or the strikingly mechanical ‘Boy, Undressing’, but also in the warp and weft of the even more subtle and profound ones like ‘Tense’ and ‘Parliament Hill Lido’, which might be my favourites.
There is lot that is quotable!
And only a few mis-steps, like ‘Freddie the Lion’ (a valiant and quirky attempt to cast light on an eccentric historical figure through his unrepentant killer’s dramatic monologue, that was stuffed with a checklist of “images and phrases I associate with Christianity, I think”, many rather naff or inapt, including several Catholic references entirely irrelevant to the Anglican vicar in question…) or the final poem, ‘A Boy Gets Married’, which I didn’t really get, but I guess that’s more on me than on the poet.
May 25, 2022
Pls pls go read this. Venom and violence and words piling on top of each other like magic. And flowers and dresses.
Vital reading for boys, anyone who has been, or is planning to be a boy. I'd say even non-boys won't do wrong reading this.
One of my faves goes like this:
Flower Boy
A boy buys a bouquet but makes clear it's for his girlfriend. He feels the stigma carrying it home, the petal edges that close up in the cold. He wishes he was soaked in water feeling every inch of his flower body. His knuckles bloom in the morning air. He pricks himself on a thorn, the beauty pushing deep into his thumb, Blood makes a meniscus of red hovering at the end of his finger, small flower of its own. He sucks his thumb as he returns to his girlfriend, tastes its thick iron violence & slight perfume.
But they're all so damn good. No peeking of mediocrity that haunts so much poetry.
Vital reading for boys, anyone who has been, or is planning to be a boy. I'd say even non-boys won't do wrong reading this.
One of my faves goes like this:
Flower Boy
A boy buys a bouquet but makes clear it's for his girlfriend. He feels the stigma carrying it home, the petal edges that close up in the cold. He wishes he was soaked in water feeling every inch of his flower body. His knuckles bloom in the morning air. He pricks himself on a thorn, the beauty pushing deep into his thumb, Blood makes a meniscus of red hovering at the end of his finger, small flower of its own. He sucks his thumb as he returns to his girlfriend, tastes its thick iron violence & slight perfume.
But they're all so damn good. No peeking of mediocrity that haunts so much poetry.
October 14, 2025
At last a collection that truly hangs together as a collection.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews