Abolish the Death Penalty

by Pierre Joris · January 4, 2007

National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty e – @ b o l i t i o n i s t January 2007

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Six executions scheduled for January, four of which are in Texas

Six men on death row have scheduled executions for January, four of which are in Texas. One of these men has been on death row longer than any other death row inmate. Another suffered severe beatings from his father during childhood.

Ronald Chambers is scheduled to be executed by the state of Texas on Jan. 27. Chambers has been on death row in Texas for over 30 years.

Marcus Reymond Robinson is scheduled to be executed on Jan. 26 by the state of North Carolina.

Read more about these and the other cases below — and ACT!

Do Not Execute Ronald Chambers!

Ronald Chambers was convicted of the April 1975 murder of Mike McMahan, but he should not receive the death penalty for his role in this crime. Chambers was only 20 years old at the time of the crime and had just become a father. He is now a grandfather, after having spent over 30 years on death row, the longest time a person has sat on death row in the country.

ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Rick Perry requesting that he stop the execution of Ronald Chambers!

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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.