Pierre Joris

Born in Strasbourg, France, Pierre Joris is a poet, translator and essayist.

Pierre Joris is the author of over 40 books. As one of the foremost translators of avant-garde poetry into both French and English, he frequently explores the lesser-known works of both major and obscure experimental poets. His translations include Exile is My Trade: A Habib Tengour Reader (Black Widow Press, 2012); Paul Celan: Selections (University of California Press, 2005); 4X1: Works by Tristan Tzara, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jean-Pierre Duprey, and Habib Tengour (Inconundrum Press, 2003); and Pppppp: Kurt Schwitters Poems, Performance, Pieces, Proses, Plays, Poetics (Temple University Press, 1994). Of his translations of Paul Celan, poet Michael Palmer said: "Joris has dwelled during the better part of his life in Celan's words and silences…he has journeyed through the work's intricacies like very few others."

Joris's own poetry, published extensively in chapbooks abroad, has been collected in two volumes, Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999 (Wesleyan University Press, 2001), and Breccia: Selected Poems 1972-1986 (Station Hill PR, 1987). He is also a celebrated essayist and editor. In the essay collection A Nomadic Poetics (Wesleyan, 2003), he explores the successes and failings of the avant-garde movement, a subject he surveyed in a two-volume anthology of 20th century avant-garde writings, Poems for the Millennium (University of California Press, 1998), co-edited with Jerome Rothenberg.

He collaborates frequently through dance, multimedia, and music with his wife, the performance artist Nicole Peyrafitte. Twice the recipient of PEN Awards for Translation, he was also the 2003 Berlin Prize fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.

Joris currently lives in New York, where he teaches poetry and poetics at the State University of New York, Albany.