My Works, Ye Mighty

My Works, Ye Mighty expands upon the conceptual literature of Christian Bök, particularly his ongoing project, entitled The Xenotext. Based upon work conducted during his tenure as the Writer-in-Residence at Athabasca University, this essay addresses the concept of “scale” in poetry, meditating on this topic with an abundance of imagery; moreover, his essay appears, alongside an epic poem, especially written by him for this publication.

In My Works, Ye Mighty, Christian Bök presents two blitzkrieg blasts in defence of his poetics of scale. The first blast is an epic boast, an Ozymandian collage, a cabinet of curious limit-cases. The riddle is that these are all artistic accomplishments, already made by other artists. The second blast is an essay that links all these achievements: a manifesto for attending to scale. Leave behind the dull and the quotidian, he cajoles, and embrace both the subtle mysteries of the micro and the impossible enormity of the macro. How far artists have already gone is genuinely dizzying—implying, too, how far there is yet to go. Bök, here, sets the stage for his own genetic infusion into the poetics of scale, an epigraph of sorts for The Xenotext.”

—Gregory Betts, Professor, English Language & Literature, Brock University

About the Author

Christian Bök is the author of Eunoia (Coach House Books, 2001), a bestselling work of experimental literature that has won the Griffin Prize for Poetic Excellence (2002). Crystallography (Coach House Press, 1994), his first book of poetry, has been 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 Beckett University in the UK.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that the original author is credited.