Paul Celan was born in Czernowitz, Bukovina, in 1920, and is widely considered to be one of the most innovative poets of the twentieth century. A German-speaking Jew, he was sent to a forced labor camp during World War II. Celan settled in Paris in 1948, where he lived and wrote until his death in 1970.
Pierre Joris has written, edited, and translated more than sixty books, including poetry, essays, and anthologies, such as Fox-trails, -tails,&-trots (Poems&Proses); Paul Celan’s Microliths They Are, Little Stones: Posthumous Prose; Arabia (not so) Deserta; and, with Adonis, Conversations in the Pyrenees. He is the editor and translator of Paul Celan’s Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry. In 2005 Joris received the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for his translation of Celan’s Lichtzwang (Lightduress), and in 2020 he received Luxembourg’s Batty Weber Prize for lifetime achievement.
Paul Celan was born in Czernowitz, Bukovina, in 1920, and is widely considered to be one of the most innovative poets of the twentieth century. A German-speaking Jew, he was sent to a forced labor camp during World War II. Celan settled in Paris in 1948, where he lived and wrote until his death in 1970. His books include
Poppy and Memory and
From Threshold to Threshold.