III. Sally Read Bio

Sally Read is a British poet and writer, born in 1971 in Suffolk, England. Raised in a left-wing, Protestant family with roots in East Anglia and Ulster, she initially pursued a career far removed from the literary world. After moving to London at age 22, she trained and worked as a psychiatric nurse, an experience that later informed the emotional depth and visceral imagery of her poetry. She earned a BA from the Open University while working and later completed an MA at the University of South Dakota, USA.

Read’s poetic journey began in her early twenties, though she has said she didn’t write a “good poem” until age 27.

Sally Read’s conversion to Catholicism is a pivotal chapter in her life and work, marked by a profound and rapid shift from atheism to faith over a nine-month period in 2010. Raised in a left-wing, Protestant family in Suffolk, England, with no strong religious ties, Read identified as an atheist for most of her life, harboring what she later described as an instinctive anti-Catholic bias. This perspective began to unravel during a time of personal and intellectual searching, culminating in a dramatic spiritual awakening that she chronicled in her 2016 memoir, Night’s Bright Darkness.

The turning point came while she was living in Italy, married with a young daughter, and working on poetry that increasingly grappled with existential questions. Despite her atheism, Read found herself drawn to explore Catholicism, initially through an intellectual lens. A key moment occurred during a conversation with a priest, whom she approached to discuss her stalled poetry project about the Stations of the Cross. She posed a provocative question—something like, “What’s the deal with you Catholics?”—expecting a debate. Instead, the priest’s response disarmed her, sparking a curiosity she couldn’t shake. She began reading Catholic texts, including the writings of saints and poets like Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose work bridged her love of poetry with spiritual depth.

The process accelerated as Read experienced what she describes as a direct encounter with God. In Night’s Bright Darkness, she recounts a moment of overwhelming presence (Augustinian experience) while sitting in a church, gazing at a painting of Jesus: “I knew, without doubt, that he was real, alive, and there.” This wasn’t a gradual warming but a seismic shift—akin, she later wrote to falling in love or recognizing a truth she’d always known but suppressed. She wrestled with skepticism, testing her experience against reason, but found it unshakable. Within months, she sought instruction in the Catholic faith and was received into the Church in 2010, a process she likens to “coming home.”

Her faith also inspired nonfiction like Annunciation: A Call to Faith in a Broken World (2018), where she explores Mary’s “yes” as a model for her own surrender.

Read attributes her conversion to a mix of grace and her own openness to truth, however unexpected. She has said it dismantled her preconceptions—about Catholicism, herself, and her vocation as a writer—replacing them with a mission to express divine encounter through language. Living in Italy, near Rome, she remains immersed in this faith, her poetry and prose now a testament to a journey from disbelief to devotion.

Poets in general by their nature engagement with the real the way others don’t.

Poetry- first level, take everything at face value first. Enter into the image profoundly

Then read into what are the meanings.

Red Sky, morning, good weather, evening bad weather. Sea of green, water as green, then see meanings

Grappling with existential questions lend themselves to abstraction but need sense entrances.

divine encounter through language.

Come to an awareness of God if honest.

Honest atheists. Searching for truth, and for whatever reason, truth is a gift. Augustine was in this category.

Read, honest, grappling, reading great depth, she knew, makes a decisive choice as Augustine knows.

she recounts a moment of overwhelming presence

Senses fail to fathom. Poets in tune what senses can fathom. God beyond that image. Beyond the objective, personal and subjective. Not impactful on the senses but rather on the heart.

Great gift she experiences this and her ability to see objectively but more underneath.

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