Karen Ducey
van Amerongen before boarding a C-130 to do
a fisheries patrol with the U.S. Coast Guard on
St. Paul Island in Alaska.
Karen Ducey
van Amerongen performs at the FisherPoets Gathering in 2016.
Continued from Page 4
crew. Fifteen people were lost off the coast
of the Aleutian Islands.
Another song, “Trip to the Bering Sea,”
was written about a young man’s early
experience with crabbing, his apprehen-
sions about the job and trying to work as
fast and effectively as possible.
“(For this song) I had the opportunity
to kind of play god and decide what lesson
this guy will learn,” van Amerongen said.
Finding fisherpoets
During his earlier years working in the
fishing industry, van Amerongen met a
number of fisherpoets. In 1998, Jon Brod-
erick reached out to van Amerongen to get
the ball rolling on what would become the
FisherPoets Gathering. At the time, van
Amerongen was editor at the Alaska Fish-
erman’s Journal. He kept a list of poets
from his payroll and worked with Brod-
erick to invite them to perform at the first
FisherPoets event.
“Jon Broderick wanted to celebrate the
stories that all of these fishermen have,”
van Amerongen said.
In 1979, van Amerongen left a teaching
career to build commercial fishing boats in
Seattle.
As his time working on boat build-
ing was about to end, van Amerongen was
contacted by the editor of the Alaska Fish-
erman’s Journal and invited to be the new
editor of the publication.
“This terrified me because I had done a
lot of writing but never put out a newspa-
per,” he said.
He accepted the position, which led to
years of trips to Alaska to share the sto-
ries of fishermen up north. During sum-
mer, van Amerongen took trips hitchhik-
ing from one fishery to another in Alaska.
Hitchhiking allowed him to cover lots of
territory and make sporadic plans to hop on
boats with fishermen to watch them work
firsthand.
“I gave up trying to meet with particular
fisherman at particular times in particular
places in Alaska,” he said.
He would board boats, listen to the sto-
ries of the fishermen, recite poems with
them, cook food for them and drive boats
at night to help crews.
“I didn’t want to just interview people
at the docks, I wanted to see what it was
like to be out fishing with the guys on the
van Amerongen, center, playing at a 4th of July event in Packwood, Washington, in 1978.
boats,” van Amerongen said. “I wanted
to celebrate and produce stories about the
people fishing in present day.”
Over the 22-year span of his career as
the journal’s editor, van Amerongen visited
every major fishing port in Alaska, he said.
“I did what I call the ‘splash and dash
method,’ where I was able to soak up as
much of the fisheries as I could,” he said.
Now, van Amerongen lives on Vashon
Island in western Washington. He contin-
ues to write and perform songs and poetry.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2021 // 5