THE XENOTEXT (BOOK 1)
‘If Human reverence was slanted more toward Nature, our scriptures might look like The Xenotext.’
— Peter Watts
Book 1 of The Xenotext is an ‘infernal grimoire’ — an ‘orphic’ volume in a diptych about both biogenesis and extinction. The book revisits the pastoral heritage of poetry, admiring the lovely idylls that rival Nature in both beauty and terror. The work offers a primer on genetics while retelling fables about the futile desire of poets to rescue love and life from the ravages of Hell. All poets pay due homage to the immortality of poetry, but few imagine that we might write poetry capable of outlasting the existence of our species, testifying to our presence on the planet long after every library has burned in the bonfires of perdition.
EPHEMERA FROM THE LIMITED EDITION
Download work from the special version of The Xenotext (Book 1): an edition of 27 signed copies (with additional, unlettered copies for contributors):
The March of the Nucleotides (Christian Bök)
The Mutation of Orpheus (Helen Hajnoczky)
The Virelay of the Amino Acids (Christian Bök)
The Xenotext Experiment, So Far (Darren Wershler)
The Xenotext – Title Pages (Christian Bök)
Thin and Pure (Braydon Beaulieu)
We Were Never Intended to Be Tied to Whatever Made Us (Derek Beaulieu)
Inventory (Christian Bök)
HADEAN EON OF THE EARTH
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THE LATE HEAVY BOMBARDMENT
‘The Late Heavy Bombardment’ evokes the demonic origins of life on Earth (during the Hadean Eon), while addressing the cosmic perils that still threaten life with extinction.
Coach House Books
Edition: ∞
2015 -
THE XENOTEXT
‘The Xenotext’ consists of two mutually codified sonnets: ‘Orpheus’ (written, via DNA, into the genome of a germ); and ‘Eurydice ‘(written, via RNA, into the protein of this cell).
No Press
Edition: 50
2017 -
THE NOCTURNE OF ORPHEUS
‘The Nocturne of Orpheus’ (from The Xenotext) is a constrained, alexandrine sonnet that constitutes an anagram of the poem ‘When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be’ by John Keats.
Penteract Press
Edition: 100
2017 -
A NOCTURNE FOR EURYDICE
‘A Nocturne for Eurydice’ (from The Xenotext) is a love poem about a visit to a cavern in the Tamborine Mountains of Queensland to see the ‘illumination’ of Arachnocampa flava.
Penteract Press
Edition: 100
2018 -
A NOCTURNE FOR EURYDICE
A Nocturne for Eurydice’ (from The Xenotext) is a love poem, first published, as a chapbook, by Penteract Press in 2018, then reprinted in The Paris Review (Spring 2022).
The Paris Review
Edition: ∞
2022
COLONY COLLAPSE DISORDER — EXCERPT
Colony Collapse Disorder is a ‘pastoral nocturne,’ which translates Book IV of The Georgics by Virgil from Latin into English. Virgil addresses his patron, the Roman general Gaius Mæcenas, advising him about the principles of beekeeping, but Virgil digresses from this apiary advice so as to retell the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice.