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	May 29th Today is the 60th birthday of Angela Patten, born in Dublin in 1952. She grew up surrounded by her mother's gift for storytelling and her father's love of music and poetry. She moved to the United States in 1977, earning a BA degree in English from the University of Vermont and an MFA in Writing from Vermont College. After having several of her poems and essays published in various literary journals in both the United States and Europe, she contributed to two poetry anthologies, Onion River: Six Vermont Poets (1997) and The White Pages: Twentieth-Century Irish Woman Poets (1999). Her first solo collection, Still Listening (1999), displayed her poetry's interweaving themes of childhood, memory, and the infusion of religion into everyday culture. Her second collection, Reliquaries (2007), contemporized these themes and expanded their geographical boundaries to include the wilderness surrounding her cabin in the Vermont woods. Patten was Poet in Residence in Stranmillis University, Belfast, in 2007 and is currently teaching at the University of Vermont. Was It For This?, John Waters Ireland today stands at a defining moment. The prosperity of the Celtic Tiger years has given way to the sudden crash, the turbulence of the euro crisis, and the loss of our sovereignty to the faceless technocrats of Europe and the IMF. Our leaders seem impotent and rage, bewilderment and despair have swept through Irish society. Was It For This…? delves into the Irish psyche to answer the questions: What happened to our hopes and dreams? What is at the heart of the sense of betrayal that we feel? In the rush to modernity, did we throw away everything of true value? Have we lost the ideals of nationhood and patriotism set out by those who dreamt of the Irish Republic? John Waters’ remarkable new book sweeps through the pages of our recent history to get to the heart our political, social and existential identity crisis. Ranging across a vast canvas, Was It For This…? argues that the Celtic Tiger was built on a collective delusion, and that the seeds of its destruction were sown many years before it even began, when we exchanged our colonial shackles for a no-less destructive dependency for short-term gain. Ireland’s sovereignty was given up long before the IMF came to town. Along the way, Waters ponders our love/hate relationship with Fianna Fáil; the undercurrents that ran through the 2011 presidential election; why our political leaders and commentators have clung onto the remnants of 1960s revolutionary fervour long after the revolution was won; how our denial of an authoritative father figure has led to a leaderless ‘sibling society’; the emptiness of our ‘youth culture’ and the suppression of real thought and discussion through cynicism and irony; and why we have lost the very language that once enabled us to speak of ‘Ireland’ with pride.				The Scent of Lemon Leaves Sunday mornings would usually find me sitting at my computer writing this blog but today I had something far more tempting to occupy my time... read on Poetry is the music of the soul, and, above all, of great and feeling souls. ~ Voltaire (1889 - 1945) Michelle Obama talks about her new book on the White House vegetable garden and the history of gardening in America. The English landscape: wonder mingles with melancholy in five fine literary meditations on nature. What am I most proud of writing? Emails to some of my readers, who were in trouble - novelist Chris Cleave on his literary life.

	Poetry Corner My Life And Theirs Angela Patten They remembered everything they were taught and relished the pleasures of memorization I look at the shameful balance on my credit card and picture her reaching for her handbag first thing in the morning before she even opened her eyes, clasping it to her chest with two hands, whispering an aspiration to her favorite saint for bringing it safely through the night. On Friday nights he'd hand her the small brown envelope that held his wages. She'd count out the pound notes and coppers. Then when his back was turned she'd turn to us and ask no one in particular how in God's name she was ever going to make it through the week. And here am I, having purchased permission to explore the upper echelons of poetry, to be like the angels, a pure spirit, not selling turnips or digging potatoes, living the soft life in America


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