Olga Kirsch
| Olga Kirsch אולגה קירש |
|
|---|---|
| Born | September 23, 1924 Koppies, South Africa |
| Education | Literature |
| Alma mater | University of Witwatersrand |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Notable works |
|
| Spouse | Joseph Gillis |
| Children | Ada, Michal |
Olga Kirsch (Hebrew: אולגה קירש; 1924–1997) was a South African and Israeli poet.
Kirsch was born and brought up in Koppies in the Orange Free State, today a part of South Africa. Her father had emigrated there from Lithuania and, though a Yiddish speaker, brought his daughter up to speak English, the mother tongue of her mother Eva, of British origin. She was the third in a family of five to three girls and two boys.
Her primary and secondary education were mostly in Afrikaans, at the school in Koppies, albeit she obtained her high school degree at the Eunice High School in Bloemfontein. Later, her family moved to Johannesburg, where she attended the University of Witwatersrand to study medicine; but after one year of studies, she decided to study Literature (Afrikaans and Dutch Literature and History). One of her teachers was the Afrikaans-language novelist C. M. van den Heever.
Kirsch wrote mostly in Afrikaans rather than English, publishing eight books of poetry in that language, as well as a volume of selected poems (she was only the second female Afrikaans poet to be published).
In 1948, at the age of 24, she emigrated to Israel and settled in Rehovot. She only returned to South Africa on three occasions: in 1975, 1979 and 1981. Her change of country influenced her writing and the language she used in her daily life, from Afrikaans to English and then to Hebrew. After her arrival to Israel, she taught English for a living, resumed studies and graduated in English Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1949, she married the British-born Israeli mathematician Joseph Gillis, professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science, with whom she had two daughters, Ada and Michal, born in 1950 and 1953, respectively.
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