Pierre Joris
Routes, Not Roots
© 2006 Pierre Joris (837101297189)
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Spoken word poetry with music
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Pierre Joris is a poet, essayist, translator & anthologist. Born in Strasbourg, France and raised in Luxembourg, Joris & has since lived in the US, Great Britain, North Africa & France. He has published over 20 books of poetry — among them: "The Rothenberg Variations," "Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999," "h.j.r.,“ Winnetou Old," "Turbulence," and "Breccia, Selected Poems 1974-1986" — & a selection of essays, "A Nomad Poetics." With Jerome Rothenberg he co-edited the two-volume anthology of 20th Century Avant-Garde writings, Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry, the first volume of which received the 1996 Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature, & volumes by Kurt Schwitters & Pablo Picasso. Joris’s translation of Paul Celan’s Lightduress received the 2005 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. More details can be found at his site: http://pierrejoris.com .
This cd assembles a range of poems written between the early eighties and 2006, and chosen because in some way or other, visibly or secretly, they are all concerned with the theme of exile & travel, with the practice and theory of nomadism. Joris believes that a “permanent diaspora is the ideal state” — as poet Anselm Hollo has it. These specific poems have their locations in the many places the author has actually lived in & wandered through, such as his native Luxembourg, the cities of London & Paris, the US, the deserts of North Africa, the costs of Turkey and the squares of Beijing. But these places are in no way exotic backgrounds — they are existential investments, exercises in alternate ways of perceiving the world, models for inventing different ways of seeing, walking, dancing, singing, talking & making poetry.
A slightly esoteric thread leads through the organization of the tracks : from the city through a between into the desert, or, read differently, the route goes through a city that lies between the desert, however that can be imagined topologically. The poems have always to be written when standing still, not when traveling through the deserts — and that standing still is the meaning of city.
Public readings have always been essential to Joris’ practice of poetry, and over time he has often collaborated with musicians in what were, unhappily, nearly always intense but unrecorded, or badly recorded performances. “Routes, not Roots” tries to remedy this by presenting a set of collaborations by Joris with a range of different instrumentalists, ranging from the rock-blues guitar of Mitch Elrod to the classical oud as played magisterially by Munir Beken, via the avant-garde jazz improvisational modes of bassist Michael Bisio and percussionist Ben Chadabe. Singer Nicole Peyrafitte, with whom Joris has often performed over the years, and who is the producer of “Routes, not Roots,” also contributes voice & radio-work.