The Xenotext: Book 2
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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.
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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.
