Pierre Joris

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Pierre Joris, born in Strasbourg, France in 1946 and raised in Ettelbruck, Luxembourg, is a poet and translator. He left Luxembourg at nineteen and since then has lived in the US, Great Britain, North Africa and France. In 1992 he returned to the Mid-Hudson valley and teaches in the Department of English at University at Albany.

1 Selected publications
2 Performance art and collaboration
3 External links

[edit] Selected publications

[edit] Poetry and translations

Joris has published over 20 books and chapbooks of his own poetry, among these :

Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999 (Wesleyan University Press);
h.j.r. (EarthWind Press, Ann Arbor);
Winnetou Old (Meow Press, Buffalo, NY);
Turbulence (St. Lazaire Press, Rhinebeck); and
Breccia, Selected Poems 1974-1986 (Editions Phi / Station Hill).

Wesleyan UP brought out a selection of essays under the title A Nomad Poetics in fall 2003.

Joris has also published a range of translations, both into English & into French, the most recent being :

4x1: Translations of Tristan Tzara, Rilke, Jean-Pierre Duprey and Habib Tengour (Inconundrum Press);
Habib Tengour : Empedokles's Sandal (Duration Press).

Also noteworthy are his translations of Maurice Blanchot's The Unavowable Community and Edmond Jabès's From the Desert to the Book (Station Hill Press).

[edit] Celan translations

Joris has translated three acclaimed works of poetry by Paul Celan into English (published by Green Integer and Sun&Moon Press); and most recently a "Selected" edition of Celan :

Paul Celan : Selections (University of California Press);
Lightduress (received the 2005 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation);
Threadsuns;
Breathturn (re-issued recently as a Green Integer book)

[edit] 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 Award for Excellence in Literature.

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 recently co-edited & co-translated The Burial of the Count of Orgaz & Other Writings of Pablo Picasso (Exact Change, 2004).

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.

[edit] Performance art and collaboration

As reader and performance artist, Joris's work with performance artist / singer / painter Nicole Peyrafitte includes :

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:

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);
This Morning (part of Music Juggle) a multimedia collaboration with composer Xavier Chabot (Premiered at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY February 5, 1997. Chabot presented this work in Japan in late 1997.