Vinegar Hill

From the New York Times best-selling author of Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín’s first collection of poetry explores sexuality, religion, and belonging through a modern lens

Fans of Colm Tóibín’s novels, including The Magician, The Master, and Nora Webster, will relish the opportunity to re-encounter Tóibín in verse. Vinegar Hill explores the liminal space between private experiences and public events as Tóibín examines a wide range of subjects—politics, queer love, reflections on literary and artistic greats, living through COVID, and facing mortality. The poems reflect a life well-traveled and well-lived; from growing up in the town of Enniscorthy, wandering the streets of Dublin, and crossing the bridges of Venice to visiting the White House, readers will travel through familiar locations and new destinations through Tóibín’s unique lens.

Within this rich collection of poems written over the course of several decades, shot through with keen observation, emotion, and humor, Tóibín offers us lines and verses to provoke, ponder, and cherish.

Colm Tóibín is an Irish novelist, essayist, playwright, and poet. He is currently the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University. He has been short-listed 3 times for the Booker Prize and has won the Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year, the Costa Novel of the Year, the Stonewall Book Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Irish PEN Award for his contribution to Irish literature. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a vice president of the Royal Society of Literature.