2020 Batty Weber Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement, Luxembourg.
Pierre Joris (born July 14, 1946) is a Luxembourger-American poet, essayist, translator, and anthologist. He has moved between Europe, North Africa, and the United States for fifty-five years, publishing over eighty books of poetry, essays, translations and anthologies — most recently Interglacial Narrows (Poems 2015-2021) and Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations In-between, with Florent Toniello, both from Contra Mundum Press.[1] In 2020 his two final Paul Celan translations came out: Microliths They Are, Little Stones (Posthumous prose, from CMP) and The Collected Earlier Poetry (FSG). In 2019 Spuyten Duyvil Press published Arabia (not so) Deserta (essays on Maghrebi and Mashreqi literature and culture). Other recent books include: A City Full of Voices: Essays on the Work of Robert Kelly (co-edited with P. Cockelbergh and J.Newberger, CMP, 2020); Adonis and Pierre Joris, Conversations in the Pyrenees (CMP 2018); Stations d'al-Hallaj (translated by Habib Tengour; Apic Editions, Algiers, 2018); The Book of U (poems, 2017, Editions Simoncini, Luxembourg). His translation of Egyptian poet Safaa Fathy's Revolution Goes Through Walls came out in 2018 from SplitLevel. In June 2016 the Théatre National du Luxembourg produced his play The Agony of I.B. (published by Editions PHI). Earlier publications include: An American Suite (early poems; inpatient press 2016); Barzakh: Poems 2000-2012 (Black Widow Press 2014); Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry of Paul Celan (FSG 2014); A Voice full of Cities: The Collected Essays of Robert Kelly (co-edited with Peter Cockelbergh; 2014, Contra Mundum Press) and The University of California Book of North African Literature (volume 4 in the Poems for the Millennium series, coedited with Habib Tengour, 2012).
Forthcoming are: Paul Celan's Todesfuge (Small Orange Import, 2023) and Diwan of Exiles: A Pierre Joris Reader (edited with Ariel Reznikoff, 2024).
Other books include The Meridian: Final Version—Drafts—Materials by Paul Celan (Stanford U.P. 2011), Canto Diurno #4: The Tang Extending from the Blade, (poems, 2010), Justifying the Margins: Essays 1990-2006 (Salt Books), Aljibar I & II (poems) and the CD Routes, not Roots (with Munir Beken, oud; Mike Bisio, bass; Ben Chadabe, percussion; Mitch Elrod, guitar; Ta'wil Productions). Further translations include Paul Celan: Selections (UC Press) and Lightduress by Paul Celan which received the 2005 PEN Poetry Translation Award. With Jerome Rothenberg he edited Poems for the Millennium, vol. 1 & 2: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry.
Pierre Joris, born in Strasbourg, France in 1946, was raised in Luxembourg. Since age 18, he has moved between Europe, the United States and North Africa and holds both Luxembourger and American citizenship.
After early studies in medicine in Paris, he decided to devote himself to literature, especially poetry, and to use English (his fourth language) as his writing language. In 1967 he moved to the US where he earned a BA (Honors) at Bard College before moving to New York City where he edited the underground arts magazine Corpus from 1969 to 1970.
After moving to London, England in late 1971, Joris founded the literary magazine Sixpack (with William Prescott) which published a wide range of innovative poetries and translations from the US, Europe and beyond, and was instrumental in helping to create what came to be known as the British Poetry Revival of the 1970s. In 1975, Sixpack received a grant from the CCLM (Coordinating Council of Little Magazines) as well as that year's Fel's Literary Award.
Between 1972 and 1975 Joris pursued graduate work, first in Cultural Studies at the University of London's Institute of United States Studies under the direction of Professor Eric Mottram, and then at Essex University where he earned an MA in the Theory and Practice of Literary Translation in 1975 under the guidance of visiting American poet Ted Berrigan. It was also in London, in 1972, that he published his first chapbook of poems (The Fifth Season).
Career
From 1976 to 1979 Joris taught in the English Department at the Université Constantine 1 in Algeria. During that time, he explored the wider Maghreb and especially the great Sahara desert. He moved back to London in 1979, and in the early eighties taught in various institutions, such as the University of Maryland's UK campuses, while expanding his career as a freelance writer and translator, reviewing, for instance, for the New Statesman, for which he also briefly wrote a “Letter from Paris,” and working as editor and writer for the Third World weekly al-Zahaf al-Akhdar. Relocating to Paris, Joris started working as author, commentator, actor & editor for France Culture, the National French radio station. During those years he would return annually to the U.S. for poetry readings and work with various collaborators on a range of translation projects.
In 1987, invited by the Iowa International Writing Program (the first Luxembourger to be thus invited) to spend the fall in Iowa City, he used the occasion to relocate to the US. He first moved from Iowa to Binghamton, N.Y., where he started a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature he was to complete in 1990; from there he moved to San Diego where he was active as visiting poet in the University of California, San Diego Literature Department and would meet Nicole Peyrafitte. A range of projects got underway at this time: besides completing several collections of poems & a first volume of essays, Joris embarked on a very fruitful collaboration with poet and anthologist Jerome Rothenberg. In 1993 the pair co-edited and co-translated pppppp : THE SELECTED WRITINGS OF KURT SCHWITTERS (Temple University Press)[2] which received the 1994 Pen Center USA West Award for Translation, and the following year a Selected Poems of Pablo Picasso, under the title The Death of the Count of Orgaz & Other Writings. Joris and Rothenberg also began work on a two volume anthology of 20th Century Avant-Garde writings, POEMS FOR THE MILLENNIUM: A UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BOOK OF MODERN & POSTMODERN POETRY, the first volume of which was published by UCP in 95 and the second in 98.
In 1992 Joris returned to the Mid-Hudson valley to take up a teaching post in the Department of English at the University at Albany, SUNY, where he taught until his retirement in 2013. In 2009 he moved to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where he lives with his wife Nicole Peyrafitte, a performance artist, painter & singer. The pair continue to work together in a range of ways, including performances with jazz musicians & co-teaching, for example in the summer sessions at the Jack Kerouac Institute at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Nicole Peyrafitte has also illustrated and created covers for most of Joris' books since 1992. They are presently involved in a series of collaborative performance actions under the title "Domopoetics Karstic Actions."[3]
Selected publications
Poetry
Joris has published over 30 books and chapbooks of his own poetry, among these :
Interglacial Narrows (Poems 1915-2021), Contra Mundum Press, 2023.[4]
Meditations on the Stations of Mansur al-Hallaj, translated into Arabic by Safaa Fathy (Cairo, 2022).
Adonis & Pierre Joris: Conversations in the Pyrenees, CMP 2019.
The Agony of I.B. (Theater, 2016).
Justifying the Margins: Essays 1990-2006 (Salt Publishing) 2009.
A Nomad Poetics (Wesleyan University Press) 2003.
Global Interference (1981).
The Book of Demons (with Victoria Hyatt, as Joseph W. Charles) (1975).
The Entropy Caper (radio play 1973).
Another Journey (1972).
Forthcoming :
Diwans of Exile: A Pierre Joris Reader (CMP 2024).
Against Tyranny: Selected Essays 1972-2018 (2024).
Paul Celan’s Todesfuge / Deathfugue (Small Orange Import 2023).
Translations
Rues du monde / Streets of the World by Anne Waldmann, translated by Pierre Joris and Nicole Peyrafitte with Eline Marx (Editions Apic, Algiers October 2023).
Memory Rose into Threshold Speech: The Collected Earlier Poetry of Paul Celan (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020).
Paul Celan, Microliths They Are, Little Stones (Posthumous prose) (Contra Mundum Press, 2020).
Revolution goes through Walls, by Safaa Fathy (SplitLevel Texts 2018).
Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry of Paul Celan (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015)
Exile is my Trade. A Habib Tengour Reader (Black Widow Press, 2012).
Paul Celan. The Meridian. Final Version—Drafts—Materials (Stanford University Press, 2011).
Jukebox hydrogène de Allen Ginsberg (avec Nicole Peyrafitte 2008).
Paul Celan: Selections (2005).
Lightduress by Paul Celan (2005).
The Burial of the Count of Orgaz and other Writings of Pablo Picasso (2004).
In 2007 his CD Routes, Not Roots appeared, with Munir Beken (oud), Michael Bisio (bass), Ben Chadabe (percussion) & Mitch Elrod (guitar).
Translations of Paul Celan
Joris has translated all the poetry of Paul Celan (except for the very early and the Rumanian-language posthumously published poems) into English (the first three volumes published by Green Integer and Sun&Moon Press); a "Selections" edition of Celan; and most recently his "Meridian" speech with materials:
Paul Celan: Microliths (Posthumous prose) (Contra Mundum Press, 2020).
Anthologies
The University of California Book of North African Literature (vol. 4 in the Poems for the Millennium series), coedited with Habib Tengour (UCP, November 2012).
Poems for the Millennium (2 volumes: 1995 and 1998)
Joy! Praise! A Festschrift for Jerome Rothenberg (1991)
Poésie Internationale : Anthologie (with Jean Portante, 1987)
Joris's first anthology was the bi-lingual Matières d'Angleterre. Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie anglaise, co-edited with Paul Buck (Les Trois Cailloux, 1984).
Edited Books
A City Full of Voices: Essays on Robert Kelly, ed. by Pierre Joris with Peter Cockelbergh & Joel Newberger (Contra Mundum Press 2020).
A Voice Full of Cities: The Collected Essays of Robert Kelly, ed. by Pierre Joris & Peter Cockelbergh (Contra Mundum Press 2013).
Claude Pélieu: La Crevaille (Posthumous Writings of Claude Pélieu, transcribed & edited by Pierre Joris) Ressacs, Editions de l'Arganier, Paris (2008).
Paul Celan : Selections, Poets for the Millennium series, University of California Press 2005.
The Burial of the Count of Orgaz and other Writings of Pablo Picasso (with Jerome Rothenberg), Exact Change, Boston, 2004.
pppppp : The Selected Writings of Kurt Schwitters (with Jerome Rothenberg), Temple University Press, 1993. Re-issued by Exact Change in 2002.
Joy! Praise! A Festschrift for Jerome Rothenberg on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, Ta'wil Books & Documents, Encinitas, 1991.
Collaborations with Jerome Rothenberg
With Jerome Rothenberg he has published a two-volume anthology of 20th Century Avant-Garde writings, Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry, (University of California Press) the first volume of which received the 1996 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award.
Rothenberg's & Joris's previous collaboration, pppppp: Selected Writings of Kurt Schwitters (Temple University Press, 1993, reissued in 2002 by Exact Change) was awarded the 1994 PEN Center USA West Literary Award for Translation.
Rothenberg & Joris also co-edited & co-translated The Burial of the Count of Orgaz & Other Writings of Pablo Picasso (Exact Change, 2004).
dePLACEments (premiered from 27 June to 2 July 2005 at Cave Poésie, Toulouse, France);
Manifesto&a (premiered in Luxembourg, July 1998);
Riding The Lines, (European Tour summer 1997; New York City performance at the Here Inn, Dec 1997).
Other performances include:
Domopoetics, a multimedia collaborative performance with Nicole Peyrafitte (since 2011).
Pierre's Words (Toward an Opera), a collaboration with composer Joel Chadabe & the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company (Premiered May 3, 1997, The Egg, Albany);
Frozen Shadows, a dance & reading performance based on Winnetou Old, choreographed by Ellen Sinopoli & danced by the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company (Union College, Schenectady, NY January 21, 1996 "The Egg," Albany, NY, April 12 & 13, 1995);
Joris's play The Agony of I.B., was commissioned and produced in June 2016 by the Théatre National du Luxembourg. It also had a staged reading at Torn Page in New York on 8 February 2020.[5]
On Pierre Joris
An issue of Samizdat commemorates the Joris/Rothenberg collaboration with original work and translations by both poets, and essays and poems for and about the poets.
Samizdat # 7, edited by Robert Archambeau (winter 2001): Rothenberg and Joris: Poets for the Millennium. [6]
Oasis #18 (published by Ian Robinson, London, 197?); new poems by PJ. Essays on P.J. by Eric Mottram, Clayton Eshleman, Robert Kelly. Interview of P.J. by Allen Fisher.
Pierre Joris in translation
Canto Diurno — Choix de poèmes 1972-2014. Avant-dire de Charles Bernstein. Traduit de l'anglais par Jean Portante avec Glenda George, Michel Maire, Didier Pemerle et la collaboration de l'auteur. (Le Castor Astral 2017).
Mawqif — Poemas y ensayos. Traducción y notas de Mario Domínguez Parra y Joseph Mulligan (Collection Temblor de cielo. LaOtra, Durango, Mexico, 2014).
Fin de siècle-Phantombild — Ausgewählte Gedichte 1974-2000. Aus dem Amerikanischen Englisch von Nico Helminger. Mit Illustrationen von Nicole Peyrafitte. (Editions PHI, 2004).