Pierre Joris, born in Strasbourg, France in 1946 and raised in Ettelbruck, Luxembourg, is a poet and translator. He left Luxembourg at nineteen and since then has lived in the US, Great Britain, North Africa and France. In 1992 he returned to the Mid-Hudson valley and teaches in the Department of English at University at Albany.
Joris has published over 20 books and chapbooks of his own poetry, among these Breccia: Selected Poems 1972-1986, Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999 (Wesleyan University Press). Joris has also published a range of translations, both into English & into French, the most recent being : 4×1: Translations of Tristan Tzara, Rilke, Jean-Pierre Duprey and Habib Tengour (Inconundrum Press). Joris has translated three acclaimed works of poetry by Paul Celan into English (published by Green Integer and Sun&Moon Press); and most recently a “Selected” edition of Celan, Paul Celan : Selections (University of California Press). With Jerome Rothenberg he has published a two-volume anthology of 20th Century Avant-Garde writings, Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry, (University of California Press) the first volume of which received the 1996 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award.
