Each Sunday morning
the bread would often get stuck
or launch itself high 

across the kitchen
where dad would catch it, juggling
each flapping bird with 

blackened wings. His dance
made us laugh. Tea, marmalade,
homemade jam, honey – 

again and again
we would wait for its metalled
cough, to watch salmon 

leaping through currents
of sun. I ate six slices
one weekend, enthralled 

with how happiness
was the colour of butter,
best eaten hot. Toast. 

I believed I could
save each tiny crumb of you,
thinking aged just four 

that every Sunday
would stay like this, love landing
soft, the right way up.

by Olga Dermott-Bond

News from the Poetry Centre! We’re delighted to be hosting MacGillivray and Niall McDevitt at Waterstones, Oxford on Tuesday 5 March as they launch their new books. Join us from 6.30-7.30pm to hear from two uniquely powerful voices. Tickets are free, but space is limited. Sign up via Eventbrite.

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Notes from Candlestick Press: 

‘Toaster’ is copyright © Olga Dermott-Bond, 2019. It is reprinted from Ten Poems for Breakfast published by permission of Candlestick Press.

Olga Dermott-Bond is originally from Northern Ireland and lives in Warwickshire. A former Warwick Poet Laureate, she has had poetry and flash fiction published in a range of magazines including Rattle Magazine, Under the Radar, Magma, Ink Sweat and Tears and Paper Swans Press. In 2018 she was commended in both the BBC Proms Poetry and Against the Grain poetry competitions, and was shortlisted in The Poetry School’s Primers competition. She is a teacher and has two daughters. Follow her on Twitter.

Candlestick Press is a small, independent press based in Nottingham and has been publishing its sumptuous ‘instead of a card’ poetry pamphlets since 2008. Subjects range from Birds and Rivers to Tea, Kindness, Home and Puddings. Candlestick Press titles are stocked by chain and independent bookshops, as well as by galleries, museums and garden centres. They can also be ordered online where you can find out more about the full range of titles. Follow Candlestick on Twitter or find it on Facebook. In 2017 Candlestick sold over 70,000 pamphlets.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.