The Xenotext: Book 2 - by Christian Bök (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The first work of 'living poetry' in the world, by the author of the bestselling book Eunoia.

Christian Bök in Book 1 of The Xenotext outlined his plan to encode a poem into the genome of a deathless bacterium, thereby writing a text durable enough to outlive any apocalypse, surviving until the death of the Sun itself. After more than two decades of effort, Bök has, at last, succeeded at this incredible experiment, and Book 2 of The Xenotext situates his enterprise within the deep time of the cosmos.

Bök rehearses some of the techniques likely to be used in the future to preserve the cultural heritage of our civilization against a potential planetary disaster (be it thermonuclear warfare or astrophysical barrage); moreover, Bök speculates that, buried within the biochemistry of Life itself, there really does exist an innate beauty, if not a hidden poetry - a literal message that we might read, if we deign to seek it.

Review Quotes

"[W]ell worth the price just for the the acrobatics and anagrams and sonnets, for the way it remixes science and fiction and the classic canon." - Peter Watts

"With The Xenotext, Book 2, Bök now ends a 25-year project with even stricter constraints: embedding a poem in the genes of a living bacterium that, when genetically transcribed, produces a corresponding poem, both of which can be genetically replicated without error, ad infinitum." - Tom Bowden, The Book Beat

Praise for the author:

"The Xenotext is equal parts revelation and revolution. Absolutely staggering." - Peter Watts

"Many artists seek to attain immortality through their art, but few would expect their work to outlast the human race and live on for billions of years. As Canadian poet Christian Bok has realized, it all comes down to the durability of your materials." - The Guardian

"Christian Bok's The Xenotext, a poem in DNA mutation, continues his attempts to redefine what poetry even is." - The National Post

"Bök's dazzling word games are the literary sensation of the year." - The Times

"A resounding success...brilliant." - The Guardian

About the Author

Christian Bök is the author of Eunoia (Coach House Books, 2001), a bestselling work of experimental literature, which has gone on to win the Griffin Prize for Poetic Excellence (2002). Crystallography (Coach House Press, 1994), his first book of poetry, was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award (1995). Nature has interviewed Bök about his work on The Xenotext (making him the first poet ever to appear in this famous journal of science). Bök has also exhibited artworks derived from The Xenotext at galleries around the world; moreover, his poem from this project has hitched a ride, as a digital payload, aboard a number of probes exploring the Solar System (including the InSight lander, now at Elysium Planitia on the surface of Mars). Bök is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and he teaches at Leeds School of Arts in the UK.