Born in Bloomington, Indiana, Mierau grew up in Nigeria, Manitoba, Jamaica, Kansas and Saskatchewan and has a Mennonite background.
Mierau's poems are well crafted and lyrical and unfailingly mirror the ancient biblical form of the psalm, yet they are dealing with the harsh realities of a modern world and are unrelentingly accurate in describing the human experience.
In other poems he looks at the plight of Mennonite farmers in Saskatchewan during the 1930s and his own family's experience of fleeing from Ukraine near the end of World War 2.
Other poems in the book examine historical figures like Louis Armstrong and Lenny Breau, highlighting the immortalizing effect of artistic expression.
Although based on the Gideon Bible the subject matter of the poems often diverge to reference pop culture, the holocaust and his family.
The poems are set up in two columns, like the King James Bible but use traditional formal shapes of English poetry (sonnet, sestina, nonce form).
[3] Memoir of a Living Disease, published by Great Plains Publication in 2005, is a non-fiction history of the treatment and current impact of tuberculosis in the world, focusing on Manitoba.
The book deals with a First Nations community that had one of the highest rates of tuberculosis infection in Canada, a result of poverty and sub-standard housing.