Andrew Button

Biography

Originally from Nottingham, Andrew Button currently lives in Market Bosworth, Leicestershire. He has had many poems placed in magazines and a pamphlet, Dry Days in Wet Towns, was published in 2016. To date, he has had two collections published, The Melted Cheese on the Cosmic Pizza, (erbacce Press, November 2017), and Music for Empty Car Parks (erbacce press, January 2020). His poetic influences include, to name but a few, Ian MacMillan, Simon Armitage, Phillip Larkin, Roger McGough, Ray Bradbury, the lyrics of 10cc, Kate Bush and Mary Chapin Carpenter, music in general, Yorkshire tea and all things Italian. Andrew’s poetry is observational, anecdotal and ironic. He likens himself to a poetic eavesdropper and is a keen observer of eccentric and obsessive behaviour. His sources of inspiration range from quirky news stories like the woman who took her a horse into McDonalds, to popular culture (especially music and films) and his own experiences of life and love (although he claims the latter is unconscious). He also written a poem about woodlice! Fellow Leicestershire poet, Siobhan Logan, says that his poems “swerve from the apocalyptic to the domestic, from cosmic to comic, on the flip of a coin.” In between spending his days as a librarian and a poet, he consumes music voraciously, participates in music quizzes enthusiastically, cycles in dayglow yellow regularly and laughs wholeheartedly. He believes that playing cricket on the beach as a small boy while his brother dug up the pitch, watching warring parents from under his bed and a farcical bicycle accident at seventeen, are just some of the experiences that have helped to make him the poet that he is today.

Featured poems

We’re Lovin’ It The heap of shit, large as a small anthill, offended customers cramming double cheese burgers into desperate jaws as staff scrambled like pilots on airfields under fire for a dust pan big enough. She led her horse to a wide-eyed counter trying to get served after the Drive Thru’ refusal where no fences were involved. Mouths dropped, fries flopped from boxes onto tables weighed down with animal meat, packaging and plastic. After the fixed penalty issued by a straight-faced PC, she patted her steed. Taking rejection in her booted stride with a smile for the assembled diners, she graciously invited them to “enjoy your Happy Meals”. Outside, she contented herself with a horse’s revenge. Lord of the Rings His love for them is more than he could give to three wives. In all shapes and sizes across the concreted globe, like amorous liaisons, he’s courted them, or somebody somewhere has sent him photographs to post on his website. This passion has filled up the spaces in his life with a compelling desire to seek out and cherish these bitumen babes. Gyratory systems power the pistons of his ardour. He waxes lyrical about their virtues and aesthetic beauty on national television and Radio Norway, how you can put anything on them - a working windmill producing flour, a duck pond with real ducks, planes, trains and cricket grounds. He acknowledges that the first intersection with an island in the middle was built in New York City in 1903. That it was the French who popularised them, but the British who coined the universal term roundabout setting the wheels of adoration in motion. President of the UK Roundabout Appreciation Society, he is the willing curator of all official roundabout jargon. Lord of the Rings, as he is known, he spends his days Island Hopping and evenings with the Knights of the Roundabout Table. Milton Keynes is their Camelot and Swindon’s Magic Roundabout is the Holy Grail grasped, hailed as the Gyratory Galactico by mainly single or divorced men in the cul-de-sac of their middle age. *Meenah’ga Exalted by North American Indians, they were sent by the Great Spirit to feed their children in a famine. A small, blue fruit of wonder endowed with special nutritional and medicinal properties in Mother Nature’s laboratories. Discovered and cherished by many tribes long before the settlers came, their uses were fully realised. Leaves were made into tea to fortify the blood and juices extracted to ease coughs and remedy poor eyesight. The Shoshone tribe introduced Captain Meriweather to the dessert delights of Blueberry Pie while the Wampanoag Indians mixed them with corn meal, honey and water to bake a pudding they called Sautauthig for the delectation of the eager, early Plymouth immigrants. Modest as their size, they’re a superfood now, delivered in tonnes to shops across the civilised world, the Clark Kent of fruit, quietly emerging from their phone booth punnets to rescue human diets and avert digestive disasters. *Meenah’ga is the North American Indian word for Blueberry. What They Don’t Tell You on Trip Advisor Catering for all appetites; greed, lust and guilt, in one building, on a vibrant street in the commercial heart of this seaside town, you gorge yourself on Lemon Chicken in the first floor restaurant, watch the sauce thicken while you get to grips with the spice of Szechuan before the heat of the after dinner entertainment. It’s definitely after eight when you make your way upstairs to the second floor for extra dessert. Under conspicuous lights that expose your excitement and unsightly beer guts, dancers bring the treats to you attentive as private nurses laying them in your lap. With libidos hanging out like your tongues you can always right these wrongs on the third floor. With a full stomach and your palate debauched it’s a short stumble up steep steps to your soul’s salvation. You’ve left just enough room to round the evening off with a healthy helping of redemption in the welcoming arms of the Playa de las Americas Christian Centre for holiday sinners. [A three storey building housing a Chinese Restaurant, Lap Dancing Club and Christian Centre in Tenerife

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