Pierre Joris


Pierre Joris is a Luxembourg-American poet, translator, anthologist and essayist.

Early life and education

Joris was born in Strasbourg, France on July 14, 1946 and raised in Ettelbruck, Luxembourg. He left Luxembourg at nineteen and since then has lived in the US, Great Britain, North Africa and France. After early studies in medicine in Paris, he decided to devote himself to literature, especially poetry, and to use English as his writing language. In 1967 he moved to the US where he earned a BA 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 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 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 my first chapbook of poems.

Career

From 1976 to 1979 Joris taught in the English Department at the University of Constantine, Algeria, years that also led him to explore the wider Maghreb and especially the great Sahara desert. It is there that he met Zahia Matougui, who would be his companion and wife for the next thirteen years. He moved back to London in 1979 & 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 publication 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 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 started at this time: besides completing several collections of poems & a first volume of essays, Joris started 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 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 SUNY-Albany, 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 collaborate 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. Peyrafitte has also illustrated and created covers for most of Joris’ books since 1992.

Selected publications

Poetry

Joris has published over 30 books and chapbooks of his own poetry, among these :

as editor:

Translations

Miscellaneous:

Celan translations

Joris has translated all the later poetry by Paul Celan into English ; a "Selections" edition of Celan; and most recently his "Meridian" speech with materials:
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, 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 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.

Anthologies

Joris's first anthology was the bi-lingual Matières d'Angleterre. Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie anglaise, co-edited with Paul Buck..
With Jean Portante he edited Poésie internationale in 1987.
Poems for the Millennium. The University of California Book of North African Poetry, edited by Joris and Habib Tengour was published in December 2012.

In the media

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.
In 2011, Peter Cockelbergh edited a book on Joris entitled Pierre Joris--Cartographies of the In-between, with essays by, among others, Mohammed Bennis, Charles Bernstein, Nicole Brossard, Clayton Eshleman, Allen Fisher, Christine Hume, Regina Keil-Sagawe, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Jennifer Moxley, Carrie Noland, Alice Notley, Marjorie Perloff & Nicole Peyrafitte.

Performance art, theater, and collaborations

As reader and performance artist, Joris's work with performance artist / singer / painter Nicole Peyrafitte includes :
Other performances include:
He lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, multimedia performance artist and writer Nicole Peyrafitte.