Writing an Immortal Poem - Christian Bok on Creating the Xenotext

Writing an Immortal Poem - Christian Bok on Creating the Xenotext

From Writing the Wrong Way with Jonathan Ball, PhD by Writing the Wrong Way with Jonathan Ball, PhD

September 16, 2025 · 54 min

About this episode

Jonathan Ball interviews poet Christian Bok about his project, The Xenotext, which encodes a poem into the genome of a bacterium.

Jonathan welcomes back poet Christian Bok to talk about his ongoing project, The Xenotext . It's a poem coded into the genome of a deathless bacterium, thereby creating a text durable enough to outlive any apocalypse. Join Jonathan's Patreon page for free at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠staystrange.ca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ . Subscribe to the Stranger Fiction YouTube channel at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠strangertv.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ . Purchase books & comics available from Stranger Fiction at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠strangerfiction.ca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ .

People in this episode

Host: Jonathan

Guest: Christian Bok

Topics covered

  • poetry
  • genetics
  • bacterium
  • apocalypse

Keywords

  • Xenotext
  • immortal poem
  • deathless bacterium

Mentioned in this episode

Products: The Xenotext

Books & works: Creating the Xenotext, The Xenotext

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