welcome viewers to our ongoing program focus coming to you from the channel seventeen studio the center for media and democracy here in burlington vermont i'm your host margaret harrington and viewers i'm very delighted today to to have our show with angela patton the poet and senior lecturer at the university of vermont dublin born angela is and we're kicking off the burlington irish heritage festival with  reading from angelus poems here in the studio and i have in front of me her books of poetry that have so far been published still listening r usefulness by angela patton and angela is an award winning poet and a wonderful a wonderful subject for our title of the show which is the irish woman's voice in poetry and to begin it i'm going to read from high tea at a low table and it's the story of a working class girl growing up in a horse and cart dublin in the one nine hundred fifty s and sixty's and angela strives find her own voice in the insistent clamor of family and clergy and the summer and the summons and lure of an unruly american future so here we are stories from an irish childhood hi tea at a low table by angela patton and i will started off and angela the poet herself will pick it up chapter one on a sunny february afternoon in one nine hundred eighty four i drove into the parking lot at the university of vermont in burlington and found a parking space and switched off the ignition then i held my breath waiting for the explosion the subaru was a real lemon in color and condition i bought it for five hundred dollars when i left my marriage and moved into an apartment on my own i was clueless about cars and terrified of driving but i had to be able to pick up my son and deliver him to school i didn't realize i would need to two poor courts of oil into the engine every day and i cracked the block in my first month of ownership i had to borrow another five hundred dollars to get it fixed but the car still had a few disturbing quirks for an intelligent girl you can be very foolish my mother would have said clicking her tongue in disapproval but she was far away in dublin and blissfully ignorant about my troubles i put the thought out of my head and reflected instead on the romantic poetry class i had just attended and the anthropology exam schedule for next day i was a full time english major putting myself through college with the help of a half time secretarial job in the center for de developmental disabilities as a thirty two year old single mother in school with nineteen year olds i felt somewhat developmentally delayed myself my son moved on happily back and forth between me and his dad spending exactly half his week with each parent it was a fractured existence but i clung to my poetry and literature studies like a drowning sailor to assist our not sure whether to cry for help or keep paddling i was walking toward the rear of the building when i noticed a young man coming towards me i registered brown hair slight build faded plaid shirt he repeatedly guidance right and left as he approached perhaps his last or his car trouble i thought preparing to offer assistance in my friendly irish way get back in the car he had i stared at him hardly able to believe my ears i looked around quickly noticing how quiet the usually crowded parking lot was not a soul in sight i was about to run in the opposite direction when the man took a gun from his pocket and pointed it at me it was a small handgun that fits snugly in his pocket the steel barrel caught the sunlight and shine like a jewel was i to do this wasn't a story i had read in a book it was the real world cutting in as if the radio of my thoughts had gone suddenly dead the weapon created an immediate intimacy between us there was something obscene about it sudden intrusion i felt the rest of the world the parking lot full of snow dusted cars and the red brick office building gilded in the pale light of the afternoon fall away under my feet my head felt light as if detached from the rest of my body i began to fumble in my bag for the car key don't make me use this the man said in a shaky voice ok ok take it easy i managed to mumble i could tell by his face that he was serious suddenly there was no question about what i should do we both understood that the simple universal language of violence i got back in the car on the passenger side he took my keys and started the engine as we drove down the street i kept seeing people i knew but they were oblivious to me we turned the chester avenue and i thought about jumping out at the traffic lights locked that door the man barked suddenly i obeyed sinking back into my seat please read chapter t another something entirely different chapter two it was far from guns and kidnappers i was reared as my father might have said i grew up during the one nine hundred fifty s and sixty's and sally narcan a working class neighborhood about seven miles dublin city this was an era in which the rag man the slum man and the coal man still came to our doorsteps with horses and carts and mr byrne the milkman arrived on his bicycle pretty technological world stories were our entertainment and our sustenance the nuns at school terrorized us with tales of leprosy of the foreign missions black babies desperately in need baptism and sudden appearances by celestial beings the radio brought plays sponsored programs and serialized stories for children there were true stories too like the assault by a priest that cost my father his eye my narrow escape from being sent to an orphanage and my first cousins discovery that the woman he had always called and kathleen was really his mother over it all a my mother's malicious louis but incessant talking that formed the foundation of my literary education my mother and her relations were all great talkers if they had been runners they could have competed at the marathon level my father on the other hand came from silent country people and he was always warning us not to be talking to strangers country people my mother explained were moody and secretive they're too quiet and they never tell you about their affairs she said of our rural relations but there are no easy enough to find out everything about  mother or mammy was born any elizabeth mary sword's in one thousand nine hundred thirteen the daughter of a sailor from the north side of dublin and a seamstress from the county wicklow she grew up in glass to dublin cheek by jowl with countless relations and innumerable neighbors a stone's throw from the seaside the shops the red brick harold national school that she attended until the age of thirteen and last till church where she married my father in  eight her relations were all sailors and we loved her stories of their adventures on the high seas with the british navy and the descriptions of the silk fans lace shawls and other exotic gifts they brought back from foreign par dad on the other hand was a culchie born in one nine hundred eighteen an admin's town county meads he grew up in a small wife washed house on one acre of land his father had been born in the house next door and although his five brothers emigrated to america the move from one house to another was the only one our grandfather made for the rest of his life these fundamental differences formed the basis of our identity as children we were irish we were catholic we were poor and our parents were as different as chalk and cheese i grew up among mammy's jovial dublin relations in a world that was filled with sounds harsh sweet and various there were the murmured prayers of the infectious fiddle playing but the world came in at my ear most of all through mammy's melodious voice as she recited poems and platitudes dispensed advice sang irish songs retold the novels she read at night and entertained us with the story of her life as she cooked and cleaned and cared for us i was a shy fearful bookish child and it was a long time before i discovered my own voice still longer before i developed the courage to use it for my own storytelling as a poet and writer even within her own loquacious family mammie was famous for her incessant talking her voice was like a radio that was never turned off it was the soundtrack to my childhood as constant and inevitable as the rain dad was always telling us to keep to ourselves don't be gassin and talking telling everyone your business sure they'd live in your ear if you left them he'd say but mommy was incorrigibly garrulous and friendly dad tried to reign are in but telling them to stop talking was like trying to stop an avalanche with her bare hands although her formal education was brief she left school at thirteen to work in greengrocer shop and on larry she had a marvelous memory and an erring ear for language she remembered all the rhymes of her childhood including the one she and other catholic children used to sing to tease the salvation army followers my mammy told me not to play with you not because you're dirtied not because you're clean because you got to my childhood memories are inextricably linked with mammy's quotations from longfellow shakespeare and tennyson her favorite advice was to dine own self be true and it must follow as the night the day that canst not then be false to any once played portia in a school production of the merchant of venice thirty years later she recited speeches with relish the quality of mercy is not strange she declaimed as she cleaned the hearth on her hands and knees it dropped with as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath she entertained us withdrawal recitations of the owl and the pussycat or acted out the tragedy of the wreck of the hess chorus i could just picture the captain lashing his little daughter to the mast her long skirt billowing up behind her and the waves crashing over the deck if i didn't go to school i met the scholars coming back he said proudly she was an avid reader of adventure stories which she devoured in bed after we were asleep next morning we begged her to tell us about the latest chapter of the scion of the spider set in deepest darkest africa or the dog crusoe set in canada's frozen north mummy seem to have a bottom platitudes were irritating when she used them as spurs to better behavior the sun is splitting the stones to denounce as she maneuvered around our beds to whisk open the curtains in the morning there is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads to fortune all four of us children slept in the same small room for years fiercely guarding the tiny territory over individual beds from the others in the meantime however mommy had us all of her mercy le then be up and doing she'd say as she attempted to pry us out of bed when i was your age i used to be up with the lark riding my bicycle through the wicklow mountains exploring this countryside instead of sleeping my life away there was always an implied comparison between us lazy good for nothings and she herself was up earliest and doing the most don't be always giving out our susan would plead for her on tidy nest in the corner none of us least of all dad could fathom her gift for memorization or endless aphorisms and household hints leave it to any he would tell us rolling his eyes she'll always have the last word the radio with its pink satin face sat in the cupboard beside the fireplace in the living room it was the center of the household and it taught me early on to love the spoken word it brought us news gameshows comedy programmes and advice to the love lorn in a series of half hour programs that were sponsored by companies like him co cleaners and dyers jacobs biscuits fry cabaret chocolate and glen abbey makers of fine nylon stockings mummy loved woman's page a sponsored program hosted by frankie byrne this is frankie byrne with woman's page the husky voice would commence a program for and maybe about you now the problems we were discussing today may not be yours but they could be someday but any event woman's page draws its material from the lives and events of real people i was passin aided by the unhappy housewives who called into the program and the glimpse of a grown up world full of romance and heartbreak frankie always followed her advice with an upbeat song by frank sinatra by way of consolation or so i assumed when she wasn't listening to the radio mommy was always singing one of her favorite songs was the blackbird of sweet so that old ireland might be free the songs made me almost unbearably sad and i begged her to please stop singing before i burst into tears the cupboard under the stairs held mammy's treasured cooper books and handwritten recipes a purple chocolate box full of family photographs and an album with lipstick images of gary cooper and rudolph valentino from her romantic girlhood we kept our own bits and bobs and wooden orange crates beside our beds and we wore our cousins cast off clothes and we licked our dinner plates and wiped our faces on our sleeves but mammy read aloud to us from charlotte sweat and the wind in the willows and we thought we were the luckiest family in creation in marked contrast to mammy dad was quiet serious and suspicious of strangers he loved rivers and trout fishing no matter how long he lived in dublin he always referred to county me that as home he had the meat chronicle delivered to the local news aides and stop and he devoured every word of it on saturday afternoons when he sat in his special chair by the fireplace he often went home at the weekends to shoot and fish with our own call john when he came back on the bus on sunday night he his brown cardboard suitcase down on a chair and click to open the locks there resting on the sheets of newspaper would be a beautiful pheasant or of fresh speckled trout he had caught that afternoon and wanted mammy to prepare for dinner dad also in sea fishing off the east pier into larry on summer evenings i love to trail behind and watch him toss the flatfish with their glassy orange eyes into the rock pool by the shore i stared down at the  brooded happily for hours at home mammy tossed the fresh fish in batter and deep fried them and we feasted night after night on their succulent white flash dad hated to be cold and like a cat he detested getting wet feet so he would never even put his toe into the freezing waters of the irish sea no matter the season he always wore a tree tweed cap for fear of getting his head wet the cap was a nondescript brown color that had molded itself to the exact shape of his head hair oil had softened the leather band inside to a kid glove texture dad automatically reached for it every time he left the house set it in place on his head and adjusted the brim with a practice gesture he raise the cap to salute acquaintances on the street on sundays who were a felt hat a respect for the sabbath but he always done the capitan on monday mornings dad loved irish music and he played the fiddle on saturday nights in the back rooms of various pubs although he never touched a drop of alcohol he didn't have mommy's gift of the gab but he was a dab hand at making up stories straight out of his head we all love to story about sonny the black doll i passionately wanted a black doll although the only nonwhite people i'd ever seen in the flesh were one or two indian medical students in dublin and a chinese doctor at said michael's hospital and done very for that matter the only non catholics i'd ever seen where the protestant girls from clarinda park school in glass to when they marched in a long line down to the sea front for their chaperoned weekend walks they were matching dark blue uniforms with funny looking flat hats on their heads they were fairly exotic but i thought black people must be even more so and i insisted that i wanted a black doll dad promised to bring one back from one of his trips to visit his sisters and somerset when he came home with the doll  hand he told us all about the trip you see the trouble was that sonny had never been in a plane before he said handing over my new toy and she wanted to try everything we had never been in a plane either only to the airport so i could easily relate to sunny's feeling it was a twin engine dakota airplane he went on i sat her down beside me and her own seat and fastened her in with the seat belt she loved the sugar cubes the air hostess brought for her all individually wrapped in paper that were just the right size for a doll dad always brought sugar cubes home for us from his various trips to england so we nodded gravely at this detail everything would have been fine except that sonny kept slipping out of her seat belt exploring she has a naturally curious disposition dad said i held sunny out in front of me she did seem to have a mischievous glint in her black eyes a drop of development was what dad called it one time she disappeared and i couldn't find her anywhere he continued he and the air hostess searched all over the plane and finally discovered sonny down in the baggage compartment i was never so relieved in my life he said dad story gave sunny so much life that she took on a personality that the other dolls eileen roshini and belinda never achieved a few years later when sunny's eyes fell into the back of her head dad came to the rescue he took her out to his shed pried off the top of her head and replace the rubber band that held her eyes in place now allana he said handing me the dog you do well to keep her very quiet for a few days she's just undergone eye surgery i was terribly impressed and followed his instructions to the letter i love that angela thank you so i mean what a cute thank you to have it do you need a little drink of water or something now before we have a drink of you starts now this the first one a few books that was published was still listening yes and i was delighted to be able to do that you know you've really brought your your young life alive there and we can see you as the little girl with taking everything in and remembering it and describing it and forth between you know that life and the one i have now yes i think i still listening is being probably the most irish the books you know are the closest to that experience anyway sure i'd love to read something so you're going to start off with fire song right yeah and i think you'd be able to see some of the the life that i described in the memoir and in some other ways ok fire son saturdays the cold man in black face appended his sack in a dusty heap at our back door father shoveled the jagged lumps into our shed where jackdaws rose beaked and furious to squawk at him from the flapping dark mother acolyte to the gods of the hearth knelt down to rake the ashes after breakfast she carried cinders in a bucket to the yard twisted newspapers crisscross an altar of coal and turf that pulsed with the tabernacle light when father arrived at six o'clock we froze in place looking for clues to gauge his mood he stood with his back to the fire rubbing his hands together rain water pouring off his bicycle cape the poor we have always with us he muttered as steam rose from his trouser legs and to him that hath not even that which he think if he hath shall be taken away she should the cat from his chair eyeing us into obedience then rake the fire to give us alphabets on our legs and make our chilblains burn she fed him with the meat that men must have we gathered around the table to watch him mix mustard in a wooden bowl the spoon trembling in his work man's hands three thousand miles and a lifetime away the radiators hisses and spits like vipers reminding me to mourn that hub of heat and it's so great yeah well that i've always loved having conversations since i read another yes ok i mentioned in the memoir about the milkman who delivered milk to the door and  this is about that milkman called a loose milk mr byrne carried a milk turn on the front of his bicycle irad every evening at our front door constant as the rain that dripped from the brim of his brown cap he wore a cloth coat in summer and a heavy brown overcoat belted in the middle on the long evenings closed in when she heard his knock you could set your clock by him mother sent us to the door with the battered sauce  byrne ladled the milk with the till he can smiling his mild smile as he backed away into the darkness on friday's she took her handbag down from the top shelf to pay the bill and even after the glass bottles caught on she from the top rode the slot man collected our leavings on a horse and cart mother washed her hands of dishes and took us to the seaside every day i thought the shapes the rocks took on of armchair sofa table where a secret only i could fathom when we walked home with our togs and let sausages under our arms past the bird's nest home for protestant children and the beehive shaped bomb shelter on the swan's hollow when everyone turned out for the procession on those warm sundays in may the girls and starched communion veils the women with miraculous medals on pale blue ribbons around their necks the dark suited men walking for abreast all of a singing hymns and saying the rosary past the front gardens where the old and sick or sat out with the holy pictures among the flowers those were days i couldn't wait shops and factories sally noggin still has fields of blue bells and cowslips and jack byrne rides his wobbly bicycle through the rain with the milk churn rattling the handle bars then when i awake n confused by links of flesh and geography i want to suck on that loose milk until the cows come home who i love i love that angela and what you good comes i see it's so visual your poetry is so visual and you make the past into the present so it comes alive to us and thank you and then i'm thinking you know they say a picture is worth a thousand words but will for you  a word is worth a thousand pictures i suppose you could say that adil rather visionary and of course we didn't have television until i was about twelve because my father refused to have it until ireland got its own station you know only so he was loved words right it wasn't just myself you know but it's a gift i mean you were taking it all in and you you you have it and you give giving it to us thank you so great ok now what's next now let's see well i'm wondering this one some of these have a lot of similar images in them but i was thinking of reading this one patch pub ok i did fifty eight i mentioned the touch problem the previous poem but it was down the street from us and  and it really did have a patch in those days now it's a big ugly barn of a place but there are couple of things about this poem it begins with grand national sunday the grand national is a steeple chase that's run in england i believe every two years and i still is so and also my parents didn't drink at all they they were teetotallers or pioneers as they were told in ireland and so my father hardly ever went to the pub and this was just a special occasion and then  fifty eight it was grand national saturday and our father never a betting man had put a shilling each way for the four of us on a horse called ox so after his dinner we trailed him to the patch to see the race running a gauntlet of cap shadowed glances as the men looked up from their pints to god at the strangers i think the world was completely brown then the smoke filled air the dun colored caps of the drinkers the dark crisps tasting of smoke and beer the television blared from among the dusty bottles on a corner shelf all eyes were glued to auk so when our sister nervous as a thoroughbred clamped her teeth down hard and bit a piece from the fluted edge of her class chaos then everyone yelling don't swallow spit it out quick now they are there you'll be right as rain in a minute but what struck me then as now was the suddenness with which everything can change one minute you're holding onto your father safe as houses the next you've bitten through some invisible membrane and the world in gary's riley is shouting at you while you stand there like a order i actually have to say that in this one because i kept having to explain irish words i actually put a little glossary in the back which was fun to try to figure out which words might not be known in america or which were irish in this one i was kind of experimenting in this book with an alter ego or persona my original name was gardens and the original form that was decoding and a norman name apparently cogan who was a norman nice and went to ireland in eleven seventy so my brother loves g d ology and he's done an awful lot of work on it but anyway i was experimenting with as a as a persona to get away from the first person pronoun this one's called extremities ask any woman about her flaws and she'll describe them with slender fingers calcifying under hard thrusts of cartilage struggling awkwardly with jars and bottle openers all deftness lost and long forgotten impossible not to feel pity for the hands divorced from the rest of the body unattractive harbor injuries of ruin they're useless as a bend fork or artificial nails and a house cat dakotans other parts of caught the news on shortwave radio her knee bones crack with the sound like twigs breaking under foot she remembers her mother's hands better now than the rest of her body before she died the fingers swelled so that the delicate bones with their  thick they're fine intelligence blunted the whole house smartly they used to crack the ideas against the side of a bull smoothed the pages of their old black prayer book slipped the blue rosary beads between their graceful joints while her lips moved in time with the rhythm her whispered prayers rising and bawling like the low drone of insects on a summer's day maturity means knowing that things and knows the day will come when there will be no more putting things on the long finger these aches and spasms say that she's alive so this is how it goes she tells herself i can't get over it i'm noticing at the end of the last poem till the cows come home and then all you get over it at the end of that it that's lovely it was it just gets you in into it more i love it well of course my irish accent is such a hybrid now but it's always in the turns of phrase that you hear it yes yes and they do come back oh ok where are we going to let's see i've just been very arbitrary about i found myself talking to her in my head without any belief in an afterlife i had these conversations with her and this is one of them it's called home improvements mother i just have to tell you about my new appliances you wouldn't believe the way i've come up in the world only wish you were still around to see it my refrigerator has an automatic ice maker and a filtered water dispenser on the door and you know that's not the half of it with my glass top stove my food processor and my dream home laundry room i'm thinking of our tiny scullery at home and the great improvements you thought it was when someone gave you an early model washer there was no more than a dash or in a metal box nevermind it took up most of you were thinking of your own mother's long labor on a washed day mondays the two way stretching and snapping of lace curtains the oppressive weight of wet will in clothing the scrubbing board and the hard bars of unkind laundry soap still i have days of misery and self pity that are grey as last week's laundry get out in the fresh air you'd say and thank god for your health and strength your good fortune and you'd be right of course except for the god part which won't wash with me in any shape or form but i didn't come here to argue only to give you an update i'd like to think you're off in the hinterlands still interested in recipes and kitchen gadgets still believing i can be improved still arguing and i never stop argue with you but my son says i'm the most stubborn person he's ever met and actually i've always been like that you know a lot and often not in a sensible way a very long time fifteen years which he never expected but we all went home for the funeral i think it's fairly self explanatory it's called that's all oh in the wake of our father's funeral we visit the cramped house where we all grew up bringing our own children with us to reenact the receiving line we fled in a body back at the church and cemetery we cluster like the draggled birds in the front door way then found out into hall and sitting room scullery and yard tentative of first because it's odd isn't it to be there without him sitting in his hard chair next to the heater that conceals the old coal fireplace saying close the door there's a terrible draft and isn't the weather very poor for your visit we're not expecting much now and he threw out everything except the letters and the photographs as if accusing god of unfair treatment after  mother died the grandchildren nose around pointing out the pictures of themselves in all the final phases of their lives how small it all appears from the wrong end of the telescope we open drawers to find a pile of letters and our mother's hand are proof of the lovers they have been impossible to think his bones are resting now one up one down in their double storied grave and all her fleshy warmth turned to dust and i don't care what they say he wasn't lovely in his blue suit and blue tie and dry clean suit as the undertaker who was naturally a friend of a relation kept repeating and i can't get over his white hands or the taste of marble forehead on my lips there are the letters we have written over all our years away from home and open gifts of dress shirts in their crackling packages new socks in pairs like courting couples the sets of fancy luggage she forgot to use some time to show up with nothing but a comb and toothbrush clutched in a plastic bag where was the leather travel kit i sent you for your birthday you'd ask him but he and shake his head there wasn't much he wanted just the odd trip to a part of ireland he hadn't seen in years to admire the changes wrought by e u grants new houses popping up like toadstools in the west for sons and daughters coming home from exile not like it used to be when he carried water for his mother's tea from the pump up the road then gathered kindling for a fire to boil the cattle before rural electri lit up the land and all the old ghosts down their tools and fled no there really wasn't much he wanted just the music session cultus on a wednesday night a lift up to the church for choir practice after mass on sunday his daily is and tomatoes in the greenhouse a nice slice of apple tart a biscuit with his tea a little company and conversation that's all pleasure and and viewers we refer you to the how do you pronounce it carrie carrig been right mean sweet rock and i was shocked and named after the place we used to live in jonesville which was basically a rock farm i'll read this one called signs i don't think it needs any explanation even after i got over all religion abandon the very idea of an afterlife i kept looking for a sign some directional signal that would indicate stay or go this man or the other but i can amputees limb that continues to agitate after being severed i wanted answers that were clear unequivocal a mathematical equation a cardinal number the answer it turned out was more like one of those infuriating mystery novels where you get to choose which door your poor protagonist will open as he bumbles for the light switch in the dark i've never found a sign that wasn't a wish fulfillment a mockup of my own creation like last night driving home i found myself meandering down a road i'd never seen before i had no idea which direction i should take and for a while i drove as if lifted out of time cut off from the current of my own existence no tether tying me to either and exhilarating really to feel so free and the sunset which i hardly and tails with mercury but i know better than to call that luminous ploy of portland a sign i've always wondered if my real life was being lived by some doppelganger on another dimension of google dot com hang out your shingle they used to say and mine might well read under construction come back later closed for repairs i love that angela i love all the poems and  this is a treat for all of us to to read poetry is to listen and poetry is such a private act right there yes there are no alone yes but you you need to communicate that's right that's right there's always a reader out there and of course all poets want to be heard listen to and exchange those experiences with other people you know or i think give them that experience or offer it i should say but yeah i lead us out then with with this last poem i'm sure you read and thank you so much angelo had leisure and you do to help celebrate the burlington irish heritage festival to here in burlington you're living right here in teaching at the university of vermont and you have such a a communal spirit to with with you the other poets also you know that's very important to me  being an emigrant and i was terribly homesick when i first came here and having people around friends and community is a huge part of my life you know it's really my security you know and and a pleasure to and not to mention conversation with people like yourself you know such a pleasure angelo thank you so much i'm going to end with a rather tongue in cheek poem here  i have a friend with whom i like to go occasionally to the spa in stoke i haven't done that for a long time but on occasion it's called in which a day at the spot reminds me of the asylum we lawyers are in the spas hushed sanctuary amid the ferns and followed are all like hopeful penitents in white robes and plastic sandals waiting to hear our names discreetly called for treatment masquerad as a pair of well heeled wives with legs long as the pedigrees of pampered house pets where the other monkey's uncle the genuine cat's pajamas later strolling in the spas walled garden among the c herbes and flowers i cannot help but think of vincent and his brother theo walking arm and arm around the asylum at sound need to provide was this what tortured him i wonder this absurd disparity between the pampered and the paupers still it's hard to stop my mouth from watering at the prospect of the body butter rose petals and pomegranate polish some faceless staff person will slather on our skins preparing us to act like happy lunatics when visiting our roles and look upon it there you are thank you i am having fun with the thank you so much and thank you viewer is watch this again and again ok bye for no