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Hello and welcome to the Spectators Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator,

and this week my guest is the writer Colin Tobin, who's best known as a novelist, but we're going to talk about his debut collection of poetry, Vinegar Hill.

Colin, welcome.

Hi, Sam.

Now, one of the thing that's always nice to do when we have a poet on

is to ask them if they're able to read a poem.

Is that one you might be able to...

Yeah, perhaps... I just read the first poem in Is that one you might be able to?

Yeah, perhaps.

I just read the first poem in the book, really.

Wouldn't that be the simplest?

Yes. The sonnet, which also means good because it's short.

The notion is a long sonnet.

So it's called September.

Are you ready?

Yep. September.

The first September of the pandemic.

The sky's a waterour, white and grey,

and Pembroke Street is empty, and so is Leeson Street. This is the time after time, what the world would look like when the world is over, when people have been ushered into seats reserved for them

in the luminous heavens. Moving towards the corner of upper Pembroke Street and Leeson Street,

an elderly man wears a mask.

...