Pierre Joris' Meanderings & mawqifs of poetry, poetics, translations y mas. Travelogue too.

Category: Algeria

Algeria / Arab Culture / Maghrebi Literature / Multimedia / Poetry / Translation

May 26, 2014

Madeleine Campbell’s “Jetties”

via Arab Literature (in English): ‘Jetties’: Translating Mohammed Dib Through ‘Sound, Gesture, Movement and Sculpture’ by mlynxqualey Madeleine Campbell is the force behind the public engagement project Jetties, designed to stage the poetry of Algerian author...

"Arab Spring" / Africa / Algeria / Amazigh Poetry / Arab Culture / Berber Literature / Book Review / Interview / Maghrebi Literature / Poems for the Millennium / Poetry / Translation

December 7, 2013

Interview on Maghreb Anthology in “Africa Is A Country”

The Book of North African Literature: Pierre Joris on Poetry and Miscegenation. By Orlando Reade. December 5 2013. A 743-page anthology of North African literature was published by the University of California last year....

Algeria / Arab Culture / Book Review / Film / Maghrebi Literature

October 18, 2013

Tears of the Crocodile

Below, the opening paras of Regina Keil-Sagawe’s excellent interview with Algerian novelist Yasmina Khadra in Qantara magazine; you can read the full interview here. “There Is a Life after Defeat” Now based in France,...

Algeria / Arab Culture / Maghrebi Literature / Minority Literature

October 14, 2013

A “Nobelisable” Djebar?

M. Lynx Qualey has an interesting post on her Arabic Literature (in English) blog, which I am reposting below. It is quite true that Assia Djebar would have been a much more interesting choice...

Algeria / Amazigh Poetry / Arab Culture / Berber Literature / Conference / Maghreb / Maghrebi Literature / Poetry / Translation

September 24, 2013

Maghreb Anthology Presentation @ NYU

Algeria / Arab Culture / Essays / Literature / Poetics / Poetry / Translation

March 5, 2013

Tengour’s “Exile is my Trade” Reviewed

Laurie Price’s review on Amazon: Exile is My Trade: A Habib Tengour Reader, edited & translated by Pierre Joris (Black Widow Press Modern Poetry 2012) (Paperback) To this reader, Exile Is My Trade turned out to...

Algeria / Maghrebi Literature / Prose / Translation

August 6, 2012

From Mourad Bourboune’s “The Muezzin”

One of the problems last summer, working on completing the Maghreb anthology (forthcoming in November, details here), was to find work by Mourad Bourboune, an Algerian writer I had heard of but never read...

"Arab Spring" / Algeria / Celebration

July 5, 2012

Algeria Celebrates

Fireworks above Sidi Fredj,in Algiers, 4 July 2012. (Photo Louafi Larbi. Reuters) A different 4 July fireworks: this one happened on the evening of 4 July in Algiers to start the celebration of today’s...

Algeria / Poems for the Millennium / Poetry / Translation

May 31, 2012

Hamid Skif

From the forthcoming Poems for the Millennium 4: Three Poems by Hamid Skif COUNTER-POEM PIM PAM POUM Today’s the wedding PIM PAM POUM Cadillacs, Mercedes, Villas. Couscous with hot blood. PIM PAM POUM My hands...

Algeria / Arab Culture / Book Launch / Essays / Intellectuals / Maghrebi Literature / Poetry / Translation

February 29, 2012

Just Published: “Exile is My Trade — A Habib Tengour Reader”

Exile Is My Trade: A Habib Tengour Reader Edited, translated & with a preface by Pierre Joris A comprehensive and wide ranging sampler of Habib Tengour’s poetry, fiction & essays. Published by Black Widow Press...

Pierre Joris, born in Strasbourg, France in 1946, was raised in Luxembourg. Since age 18, he has moved between Europe, the Maghreb & the US & holds both Luxembourg & American citizenship. He has published over 80 books of poetry, essays, translations & anthologies — most recently Interglacial Narrows (Poems 1915-2021) & Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations In-between, with Florent Toniello, both from Contra Mundum Press. In 2020 his two final Paul Celan translations came out: Microliths They Are, Little Stones (Posthumous prose, from CMP) & The Collected Earlier Poetry (FSG). Forthcoming are: Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge” (Small Orange Import, 2023) & Diwan of Exiles: A Pierre Joris Reader (edited with Ariel Reznikoff, 2024). For a full list see the right column on this blog.

In 2011 Litteraria Pragensia, Charles University, Prague, published Pierre Joris: Cartographies of the In-between, edited by Peter Cockelbergh, with essays on Joris’ work by, among others, Mohammed 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 & Nicole Peyrafitte (2011).

Other work includes the CD Routes, not Roots (with Munir Beken, oud; Mike Bisio, bass; Ben Chadabe, percussion; Mitch Elrod, guitar; Ta’wil Productions). With Jerome Rothenberg he edited Poems for the Millennium, vol. 1 & 2: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry, and with Habib. Tengour Poems for the Millennium, vol. 3: The University of California Book of North African Literature.

When not on the road, he lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with his wife, multimedia praticienne Nicole Peyrafitte. A volume of their collaborative work, to be called Domopoetics, will be published in the near future.