LECTURES

In this kick-off event for the "UNBOUND: Speculations on the Future of the Book" symposium, experimental poet Christian Bok showcases some excerpts from his current project: The Xenotext (see http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2011/04/the-xenotext-works/). For the past ten years, Bok has striven to engineer an unkillable bacterium so that it becomes not only a durable archive for storing a poem in its genome, but also an operant machine for writing a poem in response--a poem that might, in fact, outlive terrestrial civilization. Bok is professor of poetry and creative writing at the University of Calgary. Opening poems by MIT undergraduate students Alvin Mwijuka and Aimee Harrison.