Drei

23 • any pronouns

[Drei @anfuentebella]

:P

[tsarita 🪷 @_umiirog]

this is ur sign to work on your abandoned wips bc i shelved this piece in my freshman year; now I've graduated and its FINALLY done!!!

who knew i only needed 5 more years to actually execute this oc… she’s free from the drafts and i’m free from college #artph #digitalart #noAI

[Christian Bok @christianbok]

THE XENOTEXT took 25 years to complete, because I had to overcome a series of Herculean obstacles:

—————
01.
I had to teach myself enough genetic engineering and enough proteomic engineering to craft a credible proposal for this project, convincing scientists that I had the requisite aptitude to undertake these experiments—and this process took about eight years, before I qualified to receive any funding in support of my effort.

02.
The two poems took more than four years to write, because they had to conform to a necessary, but very difficult, constraint (and I worked on no other poetry during this time). I had to explore a set of nearly eight trillion ciphers, out of which only one generated any meaningful sentiments, worthy of this endeavour.

03.
I then had to encode one of the poems into a protein capable of folding into a conformation that could persist detectably within the cell—and this task required me to predict the structure of a protein, based only upon its sequence of amino acids (derived from a set of more than one novemquinquagintillion options).

04.
I had to prove that I could get the construct to work properly in E. coli (a well-understood organism), before any laboratory was willing to work with a less-understood organism—and after two years of work (with one false trace of success, requiring retraction), I managed to demonstrate the viability of my concept.

05.
I then had to redesign the gene, optimizing it (and the protein) so that it could work properly in D. radiodurans—and this process took more than ten years, due to a series of failed trials and vetoed grants (as artistic agencies, reviewed by my peers, withheld support), but despite these hindrances, I finally succeeded in 2023.

—————
THE XENOTEXT establishes a dialogue between the genetic code and an English text—and the sheer scale of the strictures upon such a dialogue might make this work one of the most stringently constrained poems ever written in the history of literature (on par perhaps with only a work like the STAR GAUGE by Su Hui).

At no time did I have any intimation that the enterprise would succeed—and every choice that refined my set of possibilities only led to more confounding constraints, all of which made the work seem even less possible to fulfill. I did not write THE XENOTEXT, so much as I found it, embedded within the very structure of life itself.

[Drei @anfuentebella]

@christianbok Hi Christian! Just wanted to come on here to say I love your work. Currently doing experimental works of my own, particularly on bio poetry and bio art.

I’ve been writing a project proposal about it. I’ve just started reading Avant-Canada and of course, the Xenotext (Book 1).💙

[Rappler @rapplerdotcom]

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has never apologized nor acknowledged the brutality and corruption of the dictatorship of his late father Ferdinand E. Marcos. #ML52 #NeverForget

#FromOurArchives: https://t.co/4A9ih1TpTM

[Kristoffer @indiohistorian]

I have always argued how HISTORY provides insight into disaster preparedness. Most of the flood-prone areas in Metro Manila today have been flood-prone since colonial times, but having been unaddressed, it continues to worsen due to climate change & other man-made problems. 1/

[Nicki Minaj @NICKIMINAJ]

?

[☾ maxine ‏꩜ @sapphicisaac]

grover underwood as goats

— a thread 🧵

[Drei @anfuentebella]

CR’s intentions to maintain a stance of political neutrality despite Israel’s genocide operations in the Gaza strip has been disappointing. As writers/artists, being neutral is regressive — especially when we are tethered to the arduous task of reading, of influencing our reader

[Drei @anfuentebella]

I started as a Poetry reader for @ChestnutReview in August. I’ve learned so much from the poetry team of CR but as a poet and international studies undergrad, geo/politics has become an essential part of my preoccupations. (1/n)

[todd dillard @toddedillard]

welp

[Devaki ♿️🩵 @DevakiDevi27]

Im just a reader but just want to say im no longer reading for CR. free Palestine 🇵🇸, end the genocide & end the occupation. no one should be silenced when calling for that.

[Sulaiman Ahmed @ShaykhSulaiman]

POPE FRANCIS CALLS OUT ISRAEL FOR TERRORISM

This is related to Israel attacking the Catholic Parish in Gaza, where 2 Christians were assassinated

Pope Francis said “IT IS TERRORISM”

[🎒Shailja #FreePalestine Patel @shailjapatel]

Israel has wiped out over 900 bloodlines in Gaza since October 7th. As in, killed every single living member of the family, in every generation. As in, no survivors of that family name. As in - genocide.

[Drei @anfuentebella]

This us why I don’t believe in the UN. It’s so obviously Western/US-leaning—a fucking puppet that preaches about democracy and freedom and yet support Israel and their genocide operation in Gaza. So much for neoliberalism—it’s all buttoned up to feed the interests of the WEST.

[Remi Kanazi @Remroum]

Israel has killed more civilians over the last 15 days than Hamas has killed in 30 years.

If you want to talk about terror, violence, and crimes against humanity, it rests with the occupier, Israel.