Angela Patten

I grew up during the 1950s and 60s in Sallynoggin, a working class neighborhood in Dun Laoghaire, about eight miles south of Dublin City. This was an era in which the ragman, the slopman, and the coalman still came to our doorsteps with horses and carts, and the oral tradition was still very much alive in our street rhymes, rote learning at school, and in my mother’s stories and recitations which formed the foundation of my literary education.

My mother’s family were all Dubliners, sailors in the British Navy and later in the Irish Lights. My mother left school at age thirteen to work in a grocer’s shop until she was married. My father was a countryman from the ancient Hill of Ward in County Meath where his ancestors had lived for centuries. He made a living as a van driver but he was also a gardener, a fiddle-player, and an exceptional handyman. 

I moved to the U.S. and Vermont at age 25 with my then-husband (an American draft-resister) and my four-year-old son, telling myself I would only stay for six months. The quintessential late bloomer and non-traditional student, I put myself through college and received my BA in English from the University of Vermont in 1986 and my MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 1996. I’ve worked as a secretary, research assistant and fundraiser, finally and happily a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Vermont in Burlington.