Archive - September 10, 2019

  Poet Andrew Oerke (PC staff: Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Jamaica 1966-71), who received the 2015 William Meredith Award for Poetry, died unexpectedly in 2014. His widow, Doctor Anitra Thorhaug, has just published Boyhood in Bayfield: Poems, Andrew’s first poems about his boyhood in Bayfield, Wisconsin that includes photographs and insights into his past and her own. Like fellow pilgrims in a challenging landscape, she gives a sense of place from which the poems were born, both the physical and cultural landscape. Oerke was not only a poet, but also the CEO of an environmental foundation, president of a microfinance organization, Golden Gloves boxing champion, academic, and Peace Corps Country Director in Malawi and Jamaica. This ‘final’ collection of his poems has been published by Poets’ Choice Publishing. For more about Andrew, go to andrewoerkepoetry.org