Angela Patten comes into her own in this collection. There is an assurance and deftness to the verse of Reliquaries that manages perspective just so: the domestic interiors of her childhood and youth are set forth with mingled irony and love, as numinous relics that survive in memory and poetry despite the savage depredations of time. There is a radiant sense in these poems of the experience of ordinary working class Irish p...
Angela Patten comes into her own in this collection. There is an assurance and deftness to the verse of Reliquaries that manages perspective just so: the domestic interiors of her childhood and youth are set forth with mingled irony and love, as numinous relics that survive in memory and poetry despite the savage depredations of time. There is a radiant sense in these poems of the experience of ordinary working class Irish people and their culture that is completely authentic and honest.
Anthony Bradley, Editor, Contemporary Irish Poetry
Poetry asks of us what we yearn for deeply-to be present each moment. Angela Patten's poems speak to that yearning. She is able to weave the accurate feelings that accompany large and small incidents. And she is able to summon the sheer texture of realization and bafflement, that bittersweet dance that even death does not undo. Ireland is the memorable ground beneath her feet but her grace and acuity are all her own.
Baron Wormser
Angela Patten is author of three poetry collections, In Praise of Usefulness, Wind Ridge Books of Vermont 2014, Reliquaries, Salmon Poetry (Ireland) 2007, and Still Listening Salmon Poetry 1999. A prose memoir, High Tea at a Low Table: Stories from an Irish Childhood, was published by Wind Ridge Books of Vermont in 2013. Her work has appeared in several anthologies and in many literary journals such as Nimrod International Journal, Poetry Ireland, Calyx Journal, The Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, and Michigan Quarterly Review. Patten has received grants for poetry from the Vermont Arts Council and the Vermont Community Foundation. She has been Visiting Poet at Stranmillis University College-Queens in Belfast, N.I., The Frost Place in Franconia, N.H., and the Breadloaf Young Writers Conference in Ripton, VT. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, she now lives in Burlington, Vermont, with her husband, poet Daniel Lusk, where she teaches writing and literature at the University of Vermont.