NoOnesRose: An Interview with Pierre Joris

Abstract

Abstract Pierre Joris discusses his literary journey from Luxembourg to Bard College to Algeria to Paris and London and finally New York. Joris focuses on his translation of Paul Celan, his engagement with the poetry of the Maghreb (culminating in his coediting of The University of California Book of North African Literature, volume 4 of Poems for the Millennium), and the importance of French poet Edmond Jabès. He goes on to address his choice to write in his fourth language, English, and the formative readings of American poetry and his connection to some of the New American Poets of the generation older than him. In the course of the interview, Joris discusses his sense of a nomadic community—or perhaps better to say “negative” or “inoperable” community. Throughout, he comes back to his commitments to writing poetry and to translation as the core the practice of poetry.