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

And this week, I'm very pleased to be

joined by the poet Jackie Kay, whose new book is May Day. Now, it's terrible shame ever to have a poet

on without asking to read, so I'm going to start by asking Jackie to read one of the poems from

the book before we start to talk about it. This poem is called Mother's Day 2020. There's a wee suite of Mother's Day poems in this book,

and so this is the third of them. Where do we post our cards to the dead? Would it be the tiny

red box at Camus Cross or the one in Egg? You laughed when I told you of a sign that read,

Don't post here. Birds nesting. No, not that one then.

And would you get it wherever you've gone and take pleasure in it? The immense pleasure you

took in all interesting post. I remember you ruffling through your address book, the Christmas

before last. He's dead, she's dead.

Oh my.

She's dead.

They're dead.

Oh, Jesus.

And now, though I can barely believe it, you are.

But your last sentence, but one was, Jackie, I can see everything so clearly now,

donning your new polka dot frames maroon and cream.

...