The Xenotext
Book 2
Published on 17. July 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
112 pages
978-1-55245-498-5 (ISBN)
Description
The first work of 'living poetry' in the world, by the author of the bestselling book Eunoia.
Christian Boek 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, Boek has, at last, succeeded at this incredible experiment, and Book 2 of The Xenotext situates his enterprise within the deep time of the cosmos.
Boek 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, Boek 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.
Christian Boek 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, Boek has, at last, succeeded at this incredible experiment, and Book 2 of The Xenotext situates his enterprise within the deep time of the cosmos.
Boek 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, Boek 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.
Reviews / Votes
"While civilizations in the future may look back upon the germ that contains The Xenotext and see there one of the last vestiges of our culture, The Xenotext today forces us to consider the "poetics" of the genetic code and, by extension, the poetry that might be buried within the origins of life itself." - Dashiel Carrera, Los Angeles Review of Books"[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, Boek 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
"Boek's dazzling word games are the literary sensation of the year." - The Times
"A resounding success...brilliant." - The Guardian
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Toronto
Canada
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 199 mm
Width: 125 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
236 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-55245-498-5 (9781552454985)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Christian Boek 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 ?rst book of poetry, was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award (1995). Nature has interviewed Boek about his work on The Xenotext (making him the ?rst poet ever to appear in this famous journal of science). Boek 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). Boek is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and he teaches at Leeds School of Arts in the UK.