Pierre Joris

Pierre Joris has moved between the US, Europe, and North Africa for forty-five years, publishing over forty books of poetry, essays, and translations. Coming in 2013 are Meditations on the Stations of Mansur al-Hallaj (poems) from Chax Press and Barzakh (poems 2000–2012) from Black Widow Press. Just out from UCP is The University of California Book of North African Literature (vol. 4 in the Poems for the Millennium series), coedited with Habib Tengour. Exile Is My Trade: A Habib Tengour Reader, edited, introduced, and translated by Joris (Black Widow Press), came out in early 2012, as did Pierre Joris: Cartographies of the In-between, edited by Peter Cockelbergh, with essays on Joris’s work by, among others, Mohamed Bennis, Charles Bernstein, Nicole Brossard, Clayton Eshleman, Allen Fisher, Christine Hume, Robert Kelly, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Jennifer Moxley, Jean Portante, Carrie Noland, Alice Notley, Marjorie Perloff, and Nicole Peyrafitte (Litteraria Pragensia, Charles University, Prague, 2011). The Collected Later Poems of Paul Celan, translated and annotated by Joris, is scheduled for early 2014 from Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Other recent books include The Meridian: Final Version — Drafts — Materials by Paul Celan (Stanford University Press, 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, Vols. 1 & 2: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry. He lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with his wife, performance artist Nicole Peyrafitte, and teaches poetry and poetics at the State University of New York, Albany. Check out his Nomadics Blog.