Pierre Joris left Luxembourg at eighteen & has since lived in the US, Great Britain, North Africa & France. In 1992 he returned to the Mid-Hudson valley & teaches poetry & poetics at the State University of New York, Albany where he lives with performance artist and singer Nicole Peyrafitte and their son Miles. He has published over 20 books & chapbooks of poetry, among them, The Rothenberg Variations, Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999, h.j.r. Winnetou Old, Turbulence, and Breccia, Selected Poems 1974. In 2003 he published a selection of essays under the title A Nomad Poetics.
He has also published a range of translations, both into English & into French, the most recent being Paul Celan : Selections 4x1: Translations of Tristan Tzara, Rilke, Jean-Pierre Duprey & Habib Tengour, and Habib Tengour's Empedokles's Sandal. He has also translated Paul Celan's 3 volumes Lightduress (for which he received the 2005 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation), Threadsuns and Breathturn, Abdelwahab Meddeb’s The Malady of Islam, Maurice Blanchot's The Unavowable Community & Edmond Jabès’s From the Desert to the Book.
With
Jerome Rothenberg he has
co-edited
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 Award for Excellence
in Literature. 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
recently co-edited & co-translated
The
Burial of the Count of Orgaz & Other
Writings of Pablo Picasso.
As
reader & performance
artist,
work
with
performance
artist
/
singer
/
painter
Nicole
Peyrafitte
includes
a
range
of
collaborations
such
as "dePLACEments" (premiered
at
Cave
Poésie,
Toulouse,
France); "Manifesto&a" (premiered
in
Luxembourg); "Riding
The
Lines," (New
York
City
performance
at
the
Here
Inn);
other
performances
include "Pierre's
Words
(Toward
an
Opera)," a
collaboration
with
composer
Joel
Chadabe & the
Ellen
Sinopoli
Dance
Company
(Premiered
at
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; "The
Egg," Albany,
NY);
and "This
Morning" (part
of Music
Juggle) a
multimedia collaboration
with composer
Xavier Chabot.