The first work of ‘living poetry’ in the world, by the author of the bestselling book Eunoia

Shortlisted for the 2016 Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry (Alberta Literary Awards)

Internationally renowned poet Christian Bok has encoded a poem (called Orpheus) into the genome of a germ so that, in reply, the cell builds a protein that encodesyet another poem (called Eurydice). After having illustrated this idea in E. coli, Bok is planning to insert his poem into a deathless bacterium (D. radiodurans), thereby writing a text able to outlive every apocalypse, enduring till the Sun itself expires.

Book 1 of The Xenotext is an infernal grimoire that introduces readers to the conceptual groundwork for this project. The book offers a primer in genetics, even as it revisits the pastoral heritage of poetry, updating the orphic idylls of Virgil for a new age of mythic danger be it in the beauty of artful biogenesis, if not in the terror of global extinction.

Paperback | 160 pages | 7.91″ x 8.03″