Patten was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland. After moving to the United States, she graduated from the University of Vermont and received an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals, and she has given readings in Ireland, Germany, the Czech Republic, and throughout Vermont and New England. She teaches at the University of Vermont. ""A double string of singing poems, it gives off a most pleasing sound, the kind that deepens with re-reading.""-Times Argus.

Reliquaries

Literature & Fiction

Patten, Angela

Poetry

Salmon Poetry

Irish born and Vermont settled poet Angela Patten turns her lyrical skills to this story-telling memoir of growing up in horse-and-cart Dublin, striving to find her own voice amid the insistent clamor of family and clergy. She was a child in the 50s when Irish milmen still rode bicycles, ladled loose mil from a tilley-can, and telling stories was both entertainment and sustenance. She broke away from home and the authoritarian rule of the Catholic Church as she came of age in the 60s and an unruly future on American soil beckoned.

High Tea at a Low Table, Stories from an Irish Childhood

Biographies & Memoirs

Memoirs

Wind Ridge Books

In Praise of Usefulness, Angela Patten's third collection of poetry, finds the expatriate Irish poet once again poised between thoughts of Ireland, the country that engendered her love of language and literature, and America, the country that fostered her development as a woman and a poet. Far from taking a sentimental view of the past, however, these poems take an unflinching look at the challenges involved in relinquishing the sweet assurances of her childhood for the harsher realities of a responsible adult life. With characteristic irony and self-deprecating humor, Patten finds much to praise in everyday life from the ritual of morning coffee to the joys of a hot shower. "What could I do," she asks, "but savor each incalculable drop?"

In Praise of Usefulness: Poetry

Irish born and Vermont settled poet Angela Patten turns her lyrical skills to this story-telling memoir of growing up in horse-and-cart Dublin, striving to find her own voice amid the insistent clamor of family and clergy. She was a child in the 50s when Irish milmen still rode bicycles, ladled loose mil from a tilley-can, and telling stories was both entertainment and sustenance. She broke away from home and the authoritarian rule of the Catholic Church as she came of age in the 60s and an unruly future on American soil beckoned.

High Tea at a Low Table: Stories from an Irish Childhood

Maple Tree Editions

In Praise of Usefulness

"Just keeping an eye on things," Angela Patten tells us, but what an eye it is, one that observes a raven as a "faux-sorrowful funeral director," a cardinal in his "ecclesiastical robe," grackles with their "Prussian blue heads." And her ears are wide open, too: "The sky is black with crows / crying in cracked voices of their plans /to steal what is left of the light" and the ovenbird with its "teacher-teacher-teacher- / as if imploring academics / to lay down their dusty books / their medieval regalia." These are birds both of North America and Ireland, but the poems are universal. How I want to be like her cardinal, a "feathered arrow," "unstoppable/as hunger, red as desire." A wonderful collection, for poetry lovers and bird lovers alike.Barbara Crooker, author of The Book of Kells (Cascade Books), winner of the Best Poetry Book 2018 Award from Poetry by the Sea and Some Glad Morning (Pitt Poetry Series)Angela Patten's The Oriole & the Ovenbird offers us bird-loving readers the pleasure of seeing the birds and savoring their habits and quirky ways. But the poems of the collection also deliver to us a profundity about our human lives as we absorb the insightful portraits of these creatures that are both common and extraordinary. These serious, crafty, and elegant compositions show us just how necessary birds are to our spiritual lives; a task that also warns us how bereft we will be if we no longer have the birds enriching our days.David Huddle, author of Blacksnake at the Family Reunion and My Surly HeartSo many images in Angela Patten's poems are like tiny, crystal-clear windows into an individual and unique understanding of nature. Reading, I come to a complete halt, reread, and then say to myself, "Oh Yes That's exactly it " Her proper audience is all nature lovers, all word lovers, and every single one of us with Irish in our ancestry.Maeve Kim, birder, teacher, musician and writer

The Oriole & the Ovenbird

Kelsay Books

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