His talents remained unknown to the masses until two years ago, when his sister urged him to enter a poetry competition attached to the Christchurch Writer's Festival.
He duly won, and since then he has been increasingly in demand, performing at charity events and symposiums throughout the country.
In February, he launched a book and DVD, both titled ‘‘From Patterson's Heart'', which record more than four decades of poems concocted while driving a tractor on his Leeston farm.
‘‘Creating poems and songs was just a way of filling in the day while I was driving up and down,'' he said.
‘‘I had no idea I would do this sort of thing - I'm basically just a farmer.''
Although he considered himself to be very shy, he had got used to performing to the point where now he could not wait to get started.
He said he did not just recite his poems, but acted them out.
He loved the feeling of holding an audience in his spell as he let a story unfold and was confident that anyone who came to his show would be entertained.
‘‘You see blokes come in and the wife's dragged them along.
‘‘You can see them thinking, ‘at half-time I'll sneak out for a jug of beer'.''
Before a recent show he spotted a couple of men with that sort of look about them, so he went over, felt their shoulders and asked them how they felt.
‘‘They said ‘Why do you ask?' and I said ‘I reckon you've had your arm twisted to come and listen to a poet'.''
After the show they came up to say they were thrilled they had come, he said.
