Christian Bök, FRSC (; born August 10, 1966, in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

, Canada) is a Canadian poet known for his

experimental An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs whe ...

works. He is the author of ''

Eunoia In rhetoric, ''eunoia'' () is the good will that speakers cultivate between themselves and their audiences, a condition of receptivity. In Book VIII of the ''Nicomachean Ethics'', Aristotle uses the term to refer to the kind and benevolent feel ...

'', which won the Canadian

Griffin Poetry Prize The Griffin Poetry Prize is a Canadian poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin. Before 2022, two separate awards went to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language. I ...

Life and work

He was born "Christian Book", but uses "Bök" as a pseudonym. He began writing seriously in his early twenties, while earning his B.A. and M.A. degrees at

Carleton University Carleton University is an English-language public university, public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1942 as Carleton College, the institution originally operated as a private, non-denominational evening college to se ...

Ottawa Ottawa is the capital city of Canada. It is located in the southern Ontario, southern portion of the province of Ontario, at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the cor ...

. He returned to Toronto in the early 1990s to study for a Ph.D. in English literature at

York University York University (), also known as YorkU or simply YU), is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's third-largest university, and it has approximately 53,500 students, 7,000 faculty and staff, ...

, where he encountered a burgeoning literary community that included

Steve McCaffery Steven McCaffery (born January 24, 1947) is a Canadian poet and scholar who was a professor at York University. He currently holds the David Gray Chair at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. McCaffery was born in Sheffie ...

Christopher Dewdney Christopher Dewdney (born May 9, 1951) is a prize-winning Canadian poet and essayist. His poetry reflects his interest in natural history. His book '' Acquainted with the Night, an investigation into darkness'' was nominated for both the Charles T ...

, and Darren Wershler. Since 2004, he taught at the

University of Calgary {{Infobox university , name = University of Calgary , image = University of Calgary coat of arms without motto scroll.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms , former ...

— but as of 2022, he works as an artist in Melbourne, Australia, and he serves as a Professor (Honorary Appointee) at Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia. In 1994, Bök published ''

Crystallography Crystallography is the branch of science devoted to the study of molecular and crystalline structure and properties. The word ''crystallography'' is derived from the Ancient Greek word (; "clear ice, rock-crystal"), and (; "to write"). In J ...

'', "a

pataphysical 'Pataphysics () is a sardonic "philosophy of science" invented by French writer Alfred Jarry (1873–1907) intended to be a parody of science. Difficult to be simply defined or pinned down, it has been described as the "science of imaginary solut ...

encyclopaedia that misreads the language of

poetics Poetics is the study or theory of poetry, specifically the study or theory of device, structure, form, type, and effect with regards to poetry, though usage of the term can also refer to literature broadly. Poetics is distinguished from hermeneu ...

through the conceits of

geology Geology (). is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical objects, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth ...

." The ''Village Voice'' said of it: "Bök's concise reflections on mirrors,

fractal In mathematics, a fractal is a Shape, geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scale ...

s, stones, and ice diabolically change the way you think about language — his, yours — so that what begins as description suddenly seems indistinguishable from the thing itself."Ed Park,
Crystal Method
" ''Village Voice'', Dec. 16, 2003. ''Crystallography'' was reissued in 2003 and was nominated for a

Gerald Lampert Award The Gerald Lampert Memorial Award is an annual literary award presented by the League of Canadian Poets to the best volume of poetry published by a first-time poet. It is presented in honour of poetry promoter Gerald Lampert. Each winner receive ...

. Bök is a sound poet, who has performed an extremely condensed version of the "Ursonate" by

Kurt Schwitters Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters (20 June 1887 – 8 January 1948) was a German artist. He was born in Hanover, Germany, but lived in exile from 1937. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dadaism, Constructivism (a ...

. He has created conceptual art, making

artist's book Artists' books (or book arts or book objects) are works of art that engage with and transform the form of a book. Some are mass-produced with multiple editions, some are published in small editions, while others are produced as one-of-a-kind o ...

s from Rubik's Cubes and

Lego Lego (, ; ; stylised as LEGO) is a line of plastic construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously coloured interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitri ...

bricks. He has also worked in science-fiction television by constructing

artificial language Artificial languages are languages of a typically very limited size which emerge either in computer simulations between artificial agents, robot interactions or controlled psychological experiments with humans. They are different from both constr ...

s for

Gene Roddenberry Eugene Wesley Roddenberry Sr. (August 19, 1921 – October 24, 1991) was an American television screenwriter and producer who created the science fiction series and fictional universe ''Star Trek.'' Born in El Paso, Texas, Roddenberry grew up ...

's '' Earth: Final Conflict'' and

Peter Benchley Peter Bradford Benchley (May 8, 1940 – February 11, 2006) was an American author. He is best known for his bestselling novel '' Jaws'' and co-wrote its movie adaptation with Carl Gottlieb. Several more of his works were also adapted for both ...

's ''

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

''.

''Eunoia''

Bök is most famous for writing ''

'' (2001), a book that took him seven years to finish. ''Eunoia'' consists of

univocalic A univocalic is a type of antilipogrammatic constrained writing that uses only consonants and a single vowel, in English "A", "E", "I", "O", or "U", and no others. Examples *One of the best-known univocalic poems was written by C.C. Bombaugh in ...

lipograms. The book uses only one vowel in each of its five chapters. In the book's main part, each chapter uses just a single vowel, producing sentences such as this: "Enfettered, these sentences repress free speech." Bök believes that "his book proves that each vowel has its own personality." Edited by Darren Wershler and published by Coach House Books in 2001, ''Eunoia'' won the 2002 Griffin Poetry Prize and sold more than 20,000 copies.

Canongate The Canongate is a street and associated district in central Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland. The street forms the main eastern length of the Royal Mile while the district is the main eastern section of Edinburgh's Old Town. David ...

published "Eunoia" in Britain in Oct. 2008. The book was also a bestseller there, reaching #8 on the Top 10 bestselling charts for the year.

''The Xenotext''

'' The Xenotext'' is an ongoing work of BioArt which claims to be “the first example of ‘living poetry.’” ''The Xenotext'' consists of a single sonnet (called "Orpheus"), which gets translated into a gene and then integrated into a cell, causing the cell to "read" this poem, and in reply, the cell builds a protein — one whose sequence of amino acids encodes yet another sonnet (called "Eurydice"). The cell becomes not only a durable archive for storing a poem, but also an operant machine for writing a poem. The gene has so far worked properly in cultures of ''

E. coli ''Escherichia coli'' ( )Wells, J. C. (2000) Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Harlow ngland Pearson Education Ltd. is a gram-negative, facultative anaerobic, rod-shaped, coliform bacterium of the genus ''Escherichia'' that is commonly foun ...

'', but the intended symbiote is '' D. radiodurans'' ("the dire seed, immune to radiation") — an extremophile, able to thrive in very inhospitable environments, deadly to most life on Earth. According to Bök from an interview in 2007, the final product will include: Bök has collaborated with laboratories at the University of Calgary, the University of Wyoming, and the University of Texas (Austin), to realize his design. In 2011, nine years after conceiving ''The Xenotext,'' Bök announced that labs had performed a successful test run of his “poetic cipher,” meaning that: In 2015, ''The Xenotext: Book I'' was published — a work consisting of meditations on both science and poetics (addressing their mythic drives for immortality). This first, "Orphic" volume sets the conceptual groundwork for the second, "Eurydicean" volume, which will document the experiment itself. ''The Xenotext: Book II'' is scheduled to be released on May 27, 2025.

''The Kazimir Effect''

In 2021, Bök published ''The Kazimir Effect''
Penteract Press
2021), listed as one of th
Times Literary Supplement’s Books of the Year 2021
This arose from a visual poetry project that begin in 2017, inspired by '' Suprematist Composition: White on White'' by

Kazimir Malevich Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (

Recognition

''Eunoia'' won the

in 2002. Bök's poem "Vowels" was used in the lyrics of a song on the EP '' A Quick Fix of Melancholy'' (2003) by the Norwegian band

Ulver Ulver (Norwegian for "wolves") is a Norwegian Experimental electronic music, experimental electronica band founded in 1993, by vocalist Kristoffer Rygg. Their early works, such as debut album ''Bergtatt – Et eeventyr i 5 capitler, Bergtatt'', ...

. In 2006, Christian Bök and his work were the subject of an episode of the television series '' Heart of a Poet'', produced by Canadian filmmaker

Maureen Judge Maureen Judge is a Canadian Screen Awards (CSA) winning filmmaker and television producer. Much of her work is documentary and explores themes of love, betrayal and acceptance in the context of the modern family, with the most recent films focusin ...

. On May 31, 2011, The

BBC World Service The BBC World Service is a British Public broadcasting, public service broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC. It is the world's largest external broadcaster in terms of reception area, language selection and audience reach. It broadcas ...

broadcast Bök reading "The Xenotext."

Bibliography

* ''

''. Coach House (1994) * ''

''. Coach House Books (2001) - winner of the 2002 Canadian

* ''Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science''. Northwestern University Press (2001) - See

’Pataphysics 'Pataphysics () is a sardonic "philosophy of science" invented by French writer Alfred Jarry (1873–1907) intended to be a parody of science. Difficult to be simply defined or pinned down, it has been described as the "science of imaginary solu ...

* ''The Xenotext (Book 1)''. Coach House Books (2015) *''The Kazimir Effect.'' Penteract Press (2021) ISBN 978-1-913421-11-3 ;As editor * ''Ground Works: Avante-Garde for Thee'' (2003) ;Included in * ''Poetry Plastique'' (2001) * ''The Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology : A Selection of the 2002 Shortlist'' (2002)

References

External links

Christian Bök pages on UbuWeb, including recordings, poetry, and essays

Christian Bök on Twitter

Griffin Poetry Prize biography

Griffin Poetry Prize reading, including video clip

University of Calgary Faculty of English profile

Eunoia online book

"Bazaar of the Bizarre: The Book of Horrors"
- Christian Bök's first publication

on CBC Radio program '' And Sometimes Y'', episode 5, July 25, 2006
Podcasts recorded at the Institut du Monde Anglophone, Université Paris 3 – Sorbonne Nouvelle, on May 22, 2008
at

University of Toronto Libraries The University of Toronto Libraries system is the largest academic library in Canada and is ranked third among peer institutions in North America, behind only Harvard and Yale. The system consists of 40 libraries located on University of Toronto's ...

Records of Christian Bök are held by Simon Fraser University's Special Collections and Rare Books
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bok, Christian 1966 births Living people York University alumni Carleton University alumni Academic staff of the University of Calgary Poets from Toronto 20th-century Canadian poets 20th-century Canadian male writers Canadian male poets 21st-century Canadian poets 21st-century Canadian male writers Visual poets