Angela Patten (1954 - ) is an award-winning Irish poet, writer, and teacher. She has authored four collections of poetry and a prose memoir. She lives in Burlington, Vermont, with her husband the poet Daniel Lusk.
Patten was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland. She immigrated to the United States in 1977, settling in rural Vermont. While raising her son, she enrolled at the University of Vermont, earning Bachelor’s degree in Writing. She then earned a Master’s in Fine Arts degree from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. After working for various nonprofit arts groups, she returned to the University of Vermont as a Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer. In 2012, she received the university’s Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award.[1]
Patten’s poems have been published in many literary journals, including Calyx, A Journal of Art and Literature by Women; Hunger Mountain; Michigan Quarterly Review; Oberon; Off the Coast; Poetry Ireland Review; Prairie Schooner; Voices International; and the Waterford Review. Anthologies with her poems include The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Volume 5; The White Page: An Bhileog Bhan; Onion River: Six Vermont Poets; Cudovista Usta (Marvelous Mouth), Drustvo Apokalipsa (Slovenia); Birchsong I and II: Poetry Centered in Vermont; Roads Taken: Contemporary Vermont Poetry; Even The Daybreak: 35 Years of Salmon Poetry; and The Breath of Parted Lips II : Voices from the Robert Frost Place, edited by Sydney Lea.[2] The Breath of Parted Lips II was a finalist for the 2004 ForeWord Book of the Year and the 2005 Independent Publisher Book Award for Anthologies.[3]
In 2021 Patten’s most recent poetry collection, The Oriole & the Ovenbird, was published by Kelsay Books. In Poets & Writers, Patton describes the focus of these poems as a “primal interplay between humans and avian species in our lives and imaginations.”[4] Her earlier poetry collections are In Praise of Usefulness (Wind Ridge Books, 2014), Reliquaries (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2007) and Still Listening (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 1999). She is also the author of the 2013 prose memoir, High Tea at a Low Table: Stories From An Irish Childhood (Wind Ridge Books). This memoir, she writes in Poets & Writers, “combines my recollections of growing up in Ireland with some unexpectedly traumatic events I experienced as a young adult in America.”[5]
Patten has been an invited participant and faculty member at literary festivals, writers’ centers, bookstores, and teaching institutions around the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. Among these are Stonecoast in Ireland (University of Southern Maine), Dingle, County Kerry, Ireland; Harlow Gallery, Hallowell, Maine; The Frost Place, Franconia, New Hampshire; Irish Writers’ Centre, Dublin, Ireland; Eigse Carlow Arts Festival, Ireland; Stranmillis University College/Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland; National Baha’i Center, Dublin, Ireland; Plattsburgh State University, Plattsburgh, New York; University of Osnabruck, Germany; and the Wexford Art Centre, Wexford, Ireland. Patten has discussed her poems and her background in television interviews, including a 2010 interview with Fran Stoddard on Vermont Public Television, where she was interviewed alongside her husband the poet Daniel Lusk.[6] In 2018, she was interviewed by Margaret Harrington as part of the Burlington (VT) Irish Heritage Festival.[7]
In 2016, Patten received the Cultural Center of Cape Cod National Poetry Prize for her poem “Tracks.” In 2022, she received the Anthony Cronin International Short Poem Award for her poem “Shine,” which was published in the Wexford Bohemian, Issue #4. Like many of her poems, “Shine” is explores a daughter’s memory of earlier family life. Patten’s other honors include artist grants from the University of Vermont Retired Scholars Award Program, the Vermont Arts Council, and the Vermont Community Foundation.
References
- ^ "University of Vermont, Announcement of Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award Winners".
- ^ Lea, Sydney (2004). The Breath of Parted Lips II: Voice from the Robert Frost Place. CavenKerry Press.
- ^ "Independent Publisher 2005 Awards".
- ^ "Poets & Writers". 22 February 2002.
- ^ "Poets & Writers". 22 February 2002.
- ^ Stoddard, Fran (2010). "Vermont Public Television Interview". YouTube.
- ^ Harrington, Margaret (2018). "Interview with Angela Patton, Channel 17, FOCUS Series".