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

Tagged: Assia Djebar

Algeria / Maghrebi Literature / Obituaries / Uncategorized

February 7, 2015

Assia Djebar (1936-2015)

Very sad to learn of Assia Djebar‘s passing: she was an amazing woman & a superb writer! Her novel Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade can stand with Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma as foundational text for Algerian post-colonial literature....

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 / Poet / Poetry / Translation

May 4, 2011

from the “Diwan Ifrikiya” anthology: Assia Djebar

Assia Djebar — born in Cherchell in 1936 — is of course best known as the major Algerian novelist of her generation (Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade; A Sister to Scheherazade and Women of Algiers in their...

Africa / Literature / Maghrebi Literature / Poets

October 8, 2009

Herta Müller Wins 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature

So the Nobel prize this year went to a German language novelist, originally from Romania. Last week when I blogged on the German Lit prize finalists, Müller was among those mentioned & signandsight put...

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.