{"id":11229,"date":"2013-12-07T12:29:40","date_gmt":"2013-12-07T16:29:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=11229"},"modified":"2013-12-07T12:29:40","modified_gmt":"2013-12-07T16:29:40","slug":"interview-on-maghreb-anthology-in-africa-is-a-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/interview-on-maghreb-anthology-in-africa-is-a-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview on Maghreb Anthology in “Africa Is A Country”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"image\"<\/div>\n
The Book of North African Literature: Pierre Joris on Poetry and Miscegenation.<\/span><\/strong>
\nBy Orlando Reade. December 5 2013.<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n
\n

A 743-page anthology of North African literature was published by the University of California last year. Ranging from documents made in sixth century Carthage to experimental prose published months after the 2011 uprisings, the\u00a0Book of North African Literature<\/a>\u00a0is the fourth installment in the\u00a0Poems for the Millenium<\/em>,\u00a0a series initiated in 1995 by\u00a0Pierre Joris<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Jerome Rothenberg<\/a>\u00a0with their huge\u00a0Volume One: from Fin-de-Si\u00e8cle to Negritude<\/em>. This latest volume was edited by Joris and\u00a0Habib Tengour<\/a>, both poets, scholars and translators; it includes their translations from French and Arabic (alongside many other translators) and commentaries situating each text within the shifting centuries and centres of its experimental format. The\u00a0Book\u00a0reflects these poets\u2019 life-work, writing and translating poetry which asks critical questions of identity and cartography; the attempt, here, to grasp the extent of this literature\u2019s influence in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, undermines the cultural borders of this region. We spoke to Joris about the anthology, translating (or not-translating) North African literature before and after 2011.<\/p>\n

A note on the text:<\/strong>\u00a0the\u00a0Book<\/em>\u00a0is emphatically not a linear or genealogical account of the literature of the region; it offers, instead, an account of the multiple beginnings, traditions and genealogies which emerge and reemerge in the literatures of the many languages of the region, and the region\u2019s diasporas. In the first section, \u2018A Book of Multiple Beginnings\u2019 in which the first work presented is a prehistoric rock painting from the Tassili region of the southern Sahara (see the above photo, by\u00a0Patrick Gruban<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The last entry is Omar Berrada\u2019s\u00a0Subtle Bonds of the Encounter<\/em>,\u00a0a bilingual poetic essay<\/a>\u00a0which samples texts by Alfred Jarry, bpNichol and Ibn Arabi, it is a fitting conclusion to the\u00a0Book. Written in September 2011, it concludes \u201cFusion without confusion is only show of science.\u201d\u00a0The Book of North African Literature<\/em>\u00a0makes its most compelling arguments in its refusal to accept totalising representations or impose pseudo-scientific categories on its texts; instead, it witnesses poetry\u2019s tendency to move across borders, creating speculative relations between diverse literatures.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

from the interview<\/em>:<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Book<\/em>\u00a0includes a series of origin myths, and presents a multiple relations between poet and language and land. Could you tell us about your friendship and collaboration with Habib, where and when you conceived the idea of the anthology?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Joris<\/em>: Habib and I met in 1976 at the University of Constantine where I was teaching in the English Department and he in the Department of Sociology. We became friends when we discovered that we were both poets and had very similar interests. We stayed in touch over the years and would meet from time to time in Paris, where Habib moved in the 80s, when I\u2019d come through that town.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d thought up the idea of the anthology even earlier \u2014 an ur-sense of the need for such a book came to me in 1966 when I met the Moroccan poet Mohamed Kha\u00efr-Eddine in Paris\u00a0and he introduced me to Maghrebi literature, insisting that it was in the Maghreb that the most interesting and revolutionary literature was happening. That\u2019s when I began to read widely in that literature (as well as in Caribbean francophone literature, as both of these felt richer\u00a0and wilder\u00a0and more alive than French \u201cmetropolitan\u201d poetry).<\/p>\n

Then, in the 80s when Jerome Rothenberg\u00a0and I imagined\u00a0and developed the concept of thePoems for the Millennium<\/a>\u00a0anthologies, I immediately thought that this concept could be expanded\u00a0and that I could finally put together this volume on the Maghreb. It seemed useful, in fact, necessary to bring in another person to collaborate on the project, and Habib was a natural, as one of the most accomplished\u00a0and experimental poets of the Maghreb\u00a0and as an excellent scholar in the various areas of Maghrebi cultures (as a trained anthropologist, he is, for example a specialist of oral literatures). A year and a half later we handed in the manuscript.<\/p>\n

[continues here<\/a>]<\/p>\n

\"pj&ht\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Pierre Joris (left) and Habib Tengour. Photo by\u00a0Dan Wilcox<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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....<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1012,4,849,1368,11,1367,22,56,66,89,91,103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arab-spring","category-africa","category-algeria","category-amazigh-poetry","category-arab-culture","category-berber-literature","category-book-review","category-interview","category-maghrebi-literature","category-poems-for-the-millennium","category-poetry","category-translation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11229"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11239,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11229\/revisions\/11239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}