{"id":13763,"date":"2015-10-12T04:18:09","date_gmt":"2015-10-12T08:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=13763"},"modified":"2015-10-15T04:25:58","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T08:25:58","slug":"poetry-and-theater-pj-as-poet-in-residence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/poetry-and-theater-pj-as-poet-in-residence\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry and theater: PJ as Poet-in-residence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 by\u00a0Florent Toniello<\/a> |<\/span><\/span> 2015-10-08<\/span> <\/a>|<\/span> <\/span>Kultur<\/a>\u00a0in Woxx:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

He\u2019s a successful Luxembourgish writer who chose already decades ago to live his dream abroad and write in English. Meet Pierre Joris, artist-in-residence this season at the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre national du Luxembourg.<\/h3>\n

\"1340_kulturregard_joris\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When starting a conversation with Pierre Joris, any poetry enthusiast has to be humbled by the achievements of the Strasbourg-born Luxembourger now residing in New York: close to 50 books published, ranging from poetry and essays to translations and anthologies. Among these are three volumes of the critically acclaimed \u201cPoems for the Millennium\u201d series (co-authored with Jerome Rothenberg and Habib Tengour), gathering poems from hundreds of twentieth-century avant-garde writers from all over the world. Yet Joris remains very approachable; poetry, after all, is also a humbling discipline that often requires great efforts to only offer a small albeit passionate public in return. This season\u2019s residence is thus an opportunity to widen his public in Luxembourg.<\/p>\n

Innovative poetry to describe today\u2019s world<\/h3>\n

While most of his countrymen choose to pursue a literary career in French or German, the poet decided himself for English. \u201cAt 18, I had started to write in German and in French, but the problematic of post-War German literature was not mine, and I was totally not interested in what the French were doing at the time,\u201d Joris explained last year in an interview with American author Paul Auster. So English it was, a choice influenced as well by childhood memories of American movies and a copy of \u201cOn the Road\u201d abandoned by a young couple on a Spanish beach. Probably the reason he remains less known in his native country than in the United States, despite six books published in the Grand-Duchy by \u00c9ditions Phi.<\/p>\n

How would Joris describe his own poetry? \u201cA poem needs to be a discovery. I get my first line from various sources of inspiration: other poems, newspaper articles, dreams, something I read on the back of a truck \u2013 but I do not wish to know where it takes me, otherwise I lose all interest.\u201d This very personal view of creative writing is also the reason why he did not publish any novel: doing so would mean having a predefined plan, which Joris seems above all allergic to. And yet he confesses reading classic poetry with pleasure: \u201cOf course I enjoy rereading Shakespeare\u2019s sonnets. But I do not believe that a traditional sonnet is a meaningful format to describe today\u2019s world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The poet\u2019s innovative and modern style will be at the forefront of this year\u2019s TNL season. Encouraged by friends Nico Helminger and Jean Portante, who also were artists-in-residence, Joris took up the challenge and will offer two very different pieces to the Luxembourgish public. The first one, \u201cThe Gulf (between You and Me)\u201d, already premiered in the United States while he is still currently writing the second one, \u201cThe Agony of I.B.\u201d. The former is a musical triptych on his poetry, commissioned by the Philadelphia-based choir The Crossing, directed by Donald Nally, on the Deep Water Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The latter is a theater play, a genre he had not yet ventured into. \u201cAlthough my work was never theatrical, it has always been tied to public performance. Public readings are an essential component of American poetry \u2013 so in a way my poems are similar to music scores that need to be interpreted on stage to be complete.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking of scores, each part of \u201cThe Gulf\u201d was given to a different composer (Gene Coleman, Chris Jonas and Gabriel Jackson), resulting in three very different atmospheres. They were presented on three different evenings during summer 2013, following a first event where Joris read his own text. In Luxembourg, the triptych will be performed for the first time in one single evening, which the author is understandably quite excited about. \u201cOn top of my research, I also did a lot of fieldwork to write that piece. My wife and I drove to Florida and witnessed the scale of the disaster. Among others, I interviewed the fisherwoman and activist Kindra Arnesen, whose words are included in the third part.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fighting Moloch with words<\/h3>\n

It is not difficult to feel that, despite being a commissioned work, \u201cThe Gulf\u201d offers the poet the opportunity to take a political stand: \u201cMoloch, Moloch \/ Moloch \u2013 \/ rules, Moloch \/ rules \/ all rules are broken when Moloch rules\u201d, he writes in the final verses of the first part, in a discreet homage to Allen Ginsberg\u2019s \u201cHowl\u201d. And when Joris adds later \u201cthe Vietnamese & the Cambodian communities \/ a really tough time being hired on \/ the great language barrier: \/ 90% of the information put out \/ in the first 60 days was English only,\u201d he sneaks in a parallel between the predominance of the English language and the almighty power of the conglomerate between the US government and BP that minimized social and environmental unrest. This combination of lyricism and political criticism is to be found throughout Joris\u2019s poetry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Agony of I.B.\u201d, to be staged next June in a world premiere, is by contrast an entirely personal project narrating the last days of Austrian poetess Ingeborg Bachmann. Besides Max Frisch and Hans Werner Henze, the other major character is Paul Celan, the famous German language Romanian poet. \u201cBachmann and Celan have been important to me from the very beginning of my career: after all, I have been translating Celan for about 50\u00a0years! The two met in 1948, two years after I was born, and Bachmann died in 1973, after I left Europe. So I was interested in looking back on this continent I was educated in after the War,\u201d he comments. The play starts with the accident that led the Austrian author to fall into a coma, and then shows her being visited by the voices of the most important men in her life. Here, the evil English language that left some communities uninformed in \u201cThe Gulf\u201d turns into a decisive advantage: it introduces a distance factor that the playwright can use to convey his own vision, rather than having to quote his characters in their original language and somehow dilute his personal touch.<\/p>\n

How does writing for the theater modify Joris\u2019s routine? True to his appreciation of everything disruptive, he explains: \u201cI have to travel between New York and Luxembourg with 23\u00a0kilograms of books, the complete works of all writers mentioned in my play. Every day I dive into Bachmann\u2019s words. Yet I am not sure I will succeed; writing this is taking a big risk, but that is what makes it worthwhile.\u201d Master of parallels, Joris also mentions that Bachmann, not as recognized as she should be, had a literary career that started with poetry and evolved onto prose. \u201cThe next books I have in the making will also be in prose, although not using a specific genre \u2013 and certainly not novels.\u201d While waiting for the results of this new endeavor, theatergoers will have this season the opportunity to discover or rediscover a unique Luxembourgish author. For those who enjoy the experience, there will be plenty to read after the performances.<\/p>\n

At the TNL this season:
\n\u201cThe Gulf (between You and Me)<\/a>\u201d, October\u00a023rd and 28th at 8pm, October\u00a025th at 5pm.
\n\u201cThe Agony of I.B.<\/a>\u201d, June\u00a014th, 17th, 18th and 21st at 8pm.<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 by\u00a0Florent Toniello | 2015-10-08 | Kultur\u00a0in Woxx: He\u2019s a successful Luxembourgish writer who chose already decades ago to live his dream abroad and write in English. Meet Pierre Joris, artist-in-residence this season at...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,91,96,817,103],"tags":[1781],"class_list":["post-13763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetics","category-poetry","category-prose","category-theater","category-translation","tag-luxembourg-national-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13763","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=13763"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13768,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13763\/revisions\/13768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}