The Point of Splitting

From London's hospital wards to rural Italy and the Great Plains, Sally Read's first collection eulogises the emotional and physical borders we cross, whether in sexual surrender, the squeezing of a trigger, or the point at which skin is pierced by a needle. What results appeals to the thresholds at which we succumb to desire, love, or grief. Yet, ultimately, there is tenderness and acceptance as she considers what breaks us, and what binds.

Sally Read was born in Suffolk in 1971. She trained and worked as a psychiatric nurse in London while completing a BA with the Open University, and went on to earn her MA at the University of South Dakota, USA. She received an Eric Gregory Award in 2001. Her three poetry collections with Bloodaxe are The Point of Splitting (2005), which was shortlisted for the Jerwood-Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, Broken Sleep (2009) and The Day Hospital (2012). The Poetry Archive released her audio CD Sally Read reading from her poems in 2010. Her poems have appeared in several anthologies, including Roddy Lumsden’s Identity Parade (Bloodaxe Books, 2010), The Picador Book of Love Poems (2011), and Poems of the Decade (Forward Publishing, 2011). A selected poems in Italian, Punto Di Rottura, translated by Loredana Magazzeni and Andrea Sirotti, was published by La Vita Felice in 2012. Sally Read also writes articles, many of which have appeared in The Tablet, and she has recently translated the spiritual diary of the Blessed Maria Crocifissa Curcio into English for the Carmelite Missionary Sisters of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus. She is poet in residence at the Hermitage of the Three Holy Hierarchs. Her two books, Night's Bright Darkness (2016), the story of her conversion to Catholicism, and Annunciation: A Call to Faith in a Broken World (2018), are published by Ignatius Press. She is a fellow of the Institute of Critical and Creative Writing at Birmingham City University. Sally Read is based in Santa Marinella, Rome, and in Bungay, Suffolk.