Bugged Out Beats: The Glitchy Flow of Xenopoetic Evolution
An Essay
ABOUT THE WRITER
Kenji Siratori is a Japanese avant-garde artist who is currently bombarding the internet with wave upon wave of highly experimental, uncompromising, progressive, intense prose. His is a writing style that not only breaks with tradition, it severs all cords, and can only really be compared to the kind of experimental writing techniques employed by the Surrealists, William Burroughs and Antonin Artaud. You can catalyze with his website here.
You can purchase a PDF file of his book EXCREMENT for any price here.
Biosemiotics, the study of sign processes in living systems, assumes a continuity between biological and linguistic codes. When these systems are disrupted—through mutation, computational error, or environmental extremity—their semiotic outputs diverge from recognizable schemas. Here, the concept of the glitch plays a crucial role: it marks the site of an infrastructural breach where meaning fails and something else—unpredictable, nonhuman—emerges. As Gilles Deleuze suggests in The Schema and Synthesis, when a spider’s web is disrupted by injury, its subsequent architectures exhibit a pathological variation in space and time, a misalignment between organism and environment. Such disturbances in biological rhythm parallel the erratic structures of glitch poetics, where errors in linguistic encoding generate alternative modes of signification. Amy Ireland’s conception of xenomorphic extremism situates alien rhythms as sites of radical transformation. The alien—conceived as both an entity and a semiotic force—disrupts standard perception, cognition, and experience. If language is a structured sequencing of signs, glitch poetics exploits its breakdown, producing texts that operate at the threshold of sense and nonsense. The semiotic malfunction thus births new linguistic entities, structured by the unpredictable cadences of error, mutation, and interference. Recent bacteriological research suggests that microbial life exhibits semiotic behavior not reducible to human linguistic paradigms. Katherine J. LeDuc, in her work on extremophiles, describes microbial colonies adapting to hostile environments through non-standard biochemical signaling, forming intricate communication networks that resemble glitch-based processes. D. M. R. McAlister’s research on cryptobiosis further elucidates how organisms in extreme conditions suspend metabolic activity, a liminal state where biological time itself malfunctions. These micro-rhythms of survival—stochastic pulsations at the edge of organic coherence—bear striking resemblance to xenopoetics, where textual structures enter a suspended, erratic temporality. David Roden’s posthumanist analysis of *disconnection* suggests that such alien rhythms are not mere aberrations but represent the emergence of nonhuman modes of expression. As Roden argues, true posthumanity involves the proliferation of sign systems radically untethered from human linguistic models. Xenopoetics embodies this condition, aligning with Mark Fisher’s theorization of the eerie: a fascination with the outside that “lies beyond standard perception.” Xenopoems arise from the entanglement of glitch biosemiotics with literary experiment, forming an anomalous linguistic corpus driven by the logic of error, microbial rhythm, and synthetic cadence. These texts resist conventional hermeneutic approaches, demanding instead a *pathological reading*—one attuned to the erratic, the fragmented, and the structurally unstable. If traditional poetry relies on the harmonization of sound, sense, and meter, xenopoetics amplifies their disequilibrium, producing linguistic architectures that reflect the inhuman and the machinic. The xenopoetic literature embodies a glitch syntax, where the recombinant logic of digital corruption generates new semantic orders. Likewise, Quentin S. Crisp’s aesthetic of obsessional realism provides another dimension to xenopoetics, where textual structures implode under the weight of their own semiotic excess. These authors enact a praxis of linguistic deformation, sculpting texts that embody the *xeno*—the foreign, the unexpected, the alien. Amy Ireland, engaging with the work of Kant and Mark Fisher, suggests that our experience of time and space is governed by strict perceptual rules that frame our cognitive architecture. Human perception adheres to a linear temporality and a three-dimensional spatiality, which systematize reality into a navigable and communicable domain. Fisher's notion of the eerie describes encounters with rhythmic regimes that do not conform to this standardization—where an outside agent appears where none should be, or where agency is conspicuously absent. Such disturbances expose the artificiality of our perceptual parameters, making us momentarily aware of alternative temporal and spatial configurations that typically remain imperceptible. Bacteriologists studying microbial biosemiotics have observed rhythms that are radically non-human. Bacteria do not experience time as we do; their genetic messaging operates in pulses, asynchronous cycles, and feedback loops that bear no resemblance to our metronomic expectations of cause and effect. These alien rhythms suggest a semiotic logic that is not bound by linear time, offering an alternative to human modes of communication and perception. The study of bacterial quorum sensing—a system through which microbial collectives regulate behavior—reveals a poetics of oscillation, where meaning is generated through shifting intensities rather than fixed signifiers. Glitch biosemiotics intervenes in this discussion by examining how systemic failures in semiotic transmission generate new modes of signification. A glitch is not simply an error but a rupture that exposes underlying structures. As David Roden suggests in his work on posthumanism, "Glitch aesthetics operate at the threshold of cognition, revealing non-anthropocentric agencies at work in the production of meaning." In this sense, glitch poetics is not merely an experimental literary technique; it is an ontological disturbance, revealing the contingency of human-centered meaning-making practices. Xenopoems emerge from this space of breakdown. They do not merely incorporate unconventional syntax or form; rather, they manifest the rhythmic interference of alien semiotic regimes. As Ireland suggests, the truly weird is not a familiar structure distorted but an encounter with an "exorbitant presence, a teeming which exceeds our capacity to represent it." In bacteriological terms, this could be likened to horizontal gene transfer, where genetic material moves between organisms in ways that defy conventional evolutionary narratives. The transmission of meaning in xenopoems, like microbial genetic exchange, does not follow linear progression but unfolds through rupture, drift, and unforeseen connectivity. Mark Fisher identifies the eerie as arising from mismatched modes of intelligence, cognition, and communication. In the context of xenopoetics, this mismatch is not simply thematic but structural—embedded in the temporal and spatial organization of the text itself. David Grinspoon's research into extremophiles further complicates this perspective. "Life beyond Earth," he writes, "would likely evolve in response to rhythmic forces unrecognizable to us—tidal locking, radiation pulses, subsurface chemistry." If cognition is structured by rhythm, then alien intelligence may not only think differently but may exist within a fundamentally different semiotic and temporal order. Xenopoems, then, are not merely speculative exercises in alien language but sites where these mismatched rhythms become tangible. As Ireland asks, "What would it feel like to interface with a spacetime—an alien rhythm—that does not follow any recognizable human pattern?" Xenopoems answer this by enacting such rhythms, disrupting the reader's perceptual continuity and exposing them to the eerie pulse of the outside. To read a xenopoem is to enter a space where language itself is haunted by an outsideness that refuses domestication. Like the microbial networks that sustain and unsettle life on Earth, xenopoems operate through diffraction, resonance, and unpredictable mutation. They are not merely texts but encounters—frictional interfaces where the human reader must contend with the unreadable. In this way, xenopoems do not simply represent alien rhythms; they are alien rhythms, inscribing literature into the posthuman continuum. Alien rhythms are disturbances in human perception of time, space, and causality—manifestations of biosemiotic glitches that rupture our ability to parse information within familiar structures. As Amy Ireland describes, zones such as Tarkovsky’s Zone, VanderMeer’s Area X, and Harrison’s event site disrupt the spatio-temporal continuity of human experience, enforcing an alternative logic governed by alien rhythms. These zones operate through a transversal refraction of biological, chemical, and informational processes—akin to the way bacterial colonies exhibit emergent communication patterns incomprehensible to higher organisms. Alien rhythm embedded in the fabric of organic life, a logic of mutation and recombination beyond linear causality. The bacterial lexicon, built on biochemical feedback loops, viral co-option, and epigenetic shifts, mirrors the self-modifying, unpredictable semiotics of the zones. Such rhythms, incomprehensible to anthropocentric logic, serve as the foundation for glitch poetics: a form of xenoliterature that defies traditional meaning structures, where words function as unstable entities undergoing continuous mutation. If glitch biosemiotics represents a collapse of meaning within the human domain, xenopoems are its linguistic residue—poetic fragments that emerge from the chaotic interface between human and nonhuman semiotic structures. These poems function like microbial genetic exchange, transgressing linguistic purity through unpredictable recombination. The semiotic instability of the zone, in this sense, parallels what Rosi Braidotti calls a “posthuman poetics,” where language is no longer an exclusively human possession but an open system susceptible to external contamination. Amy Ireland suggests that “xenomorphic literature thrives on a dissolution of self, a transformation into a pattern beyond individuation.” In this light, xenopoems do not merely depict alien encounters—they *are* alien encounters, linguistic artifacts shaped by the unknown forces of glitch biosemiotics. As David Roden proposes, true posthuman art must emerge from “nonhuman cognitive architectures” rather than being bound by human conceptual constraints. Xenopoems, in their fragmented, unpredictable, and even “contaminated” structures, exemplify this process. Bacteria, viruses, and other microbial agents operate on principles of lateral genetic transfer, enabling a form of communication that evades hierarchical organization. This biosemiotic process mirrors the evolution of xenopoems, where linguistic forms are not authored but propagated, recombined, and dispersed across transhuman vectors. Viral sequences inserted into the genome act as encrypted messages from the deep evolutionary past, manifesting unpredictably across time and space. This aligns with Quentin S. Crisp’s notion of literature as an “infection”—a mode of being altered by textual engagement rather than mere interpretation. Xenopoems enact this viral logic through their recombinant, glitch-driven structures. The rhythm of bacterial division, viral insertion, and mutational drift becomes the template for a literature that refuses fixity. In this sense, xenopoems do not merely depict alien environments; they instantiate them at the level of form. Biologists often define the success of a group of organisms in evolutionary or ecological terms—either by their persistence over geological time, their species richness, or their dominance in particular ecosystems. By any of these measures, insects are among the most successful terrestrial life forms, having evolved critical adaptive features such as metamorphosis and eusociality over hundreds of millions of years. These adaptive processes—gradual and mediated by environmental feedback—mirror the way glitches function in semiotic and computational systems. A glitch in biosemiotics is not merely an error but an encoded disturbance that reconfigures meaning, much like the emergence of winged insects from primitive terrestrial ancestors marked a fundamental shift in evolutionary trajectories. From a biosemiotic perspective, insect evolution can be understood as a sequence of encoded alterations that recursively redefine their environmental interactions. The development of wings, for example, did not emerge as a sudden event but as an accretion of micro-adaptive modifications over millions of years. Similarly, glitch biosemiotics proposes that the erratic and the disjunctive within sign systems are not noise but an integral part of meaning construction. In this view, the very morphology of insects—marked by transformations, segmentations, and nonhuman modes of perception—can be interpreted as a form of glitch poetics. Xenopoems are poetic structures that incorporate glitch biosemiotic principles by encoding nonhuman temporalities, fragmented signifiers, and disjointed ontologies. They resist linear coherence and instead function through erratic mutations, much like the evolutionary trajectories of insects adapting to new ecological niches. Just as hexapods likely diverged from a crustacean ancestor, transforming over deep time into diverse insect lineages, xenopoems evolve through disruptions, each glitch generating new semiotic possibilities. The notion that insects, as the most diverse and widespread form of terrestrial life, have co-opted their semiotic structures to engage in environmental inscription aligns with xenopoetic thought. Their communicative modalities—pheromonal codes, vibrational signaling, and gestural lexicons—operate outside of traditional linguistic frameworks, suggesting a radical expansion of what literature might entail. The environmental inscriptions of eusocial insects, such as termite mounds or ant pheromone trails, function as materialized texts—nonhuman architectures of meaning shaped by iterative interactions and collective intelligence. Just as insects adapted to terrestrial life through the refinement of their respiratory systems, excretory mechanisms, and flight musculature, literature evolves through its own disruptions—glitches that rewire its semiotic possibilities. The evolutionary history of insect flight offers a striking parallel: initially developing from lateral expansions used for gliding, wings later transformed into fully articulated structures capable of powered flight. This gradual but radical shift mirrors the function of glitches in poetic structures—what initially appears as error or breakdown often serves as a site for semiotic innovation. In glitch poetics, the breakdown of conventional linguistic forms—unexpected line breaks, corrupted syntax, and non-Euclidean narrative architectures—serves a similar evolutionary function. A xenopoem is not merely a text but a dynamic system that mutates, resists stabilization, and encodes its own discontinuities. Just as fossil records show the episodic emergence of insect traits, xenopoems materialize as disruptions within traditional literary forms, allowing literature to interface with the posthuman, the machinic, and the xeno-organic. Glitch biosemiotics reveals that disruptions in biological sign processes are not random but functionally significant, contributing to evolutionary adaptation and ecological success. By extrapolating these principles into glitch poetics, we recognize xenopoems as a form of literary evolution—texts that encode the erratic, the inhuman, and the structurally novel. Just as insects have become the dominant terrestrial life form through adaptive innovations, glitch poetics paves the way for a literature that embraces rupture, mutation, and posthuman inscription. Xenopoems, therefore, are not just a stylistic experiment but a necessary expansion of literature into the realms of the alien, the microbial, and the machinic—an ecological and biosemiotic inevitability in an era of accelerating complexity. Language is an error—a machine's hallucination. In this view, error is not merely a failure but a mode of existence that enables new forms of expression to arise. Similarly, the evolutionary history of insects, as outlined by Contreras and Bradley, reveals a series of adaptations that resist conventional teleological narratives of progression. Insects, despite their minute size, employ highly specialized strategies to navigate desiccation, osmoregulation, and respiration. Their capacity to extract water from air through rectal ion transport, as demonstrated in various terrestrial species, represents an evolutionary glitch—an adaptation arising from environmental noise rather than predetermined design. This discontinuous emergence of traits within insect evolution parallels the disjointed yet meaningful aesthetics of xenopoems. The osmoregulatory adaptations of insects provide a compelling analogy for glitch poetics. The capacity to produce hyperosmotic excreta, a trait shared by nearly all insects, illustrates a fundamental principle of glitch biosemiotics: error as function. Insect physiology, particularly the role of Malpighian tubules and rectal absorption, demonstrates how biological systems encode unexpected workarounds in response to environmental pressures. This mirrors the way glitch poetics disrupts linguistic norms to generate new forms of meaning. Recent research in insect osmoregulation highlights the role of bacterial symbionts in facilitating these adaptive mechanisms. Bacteria residing within Malpighian tubules contribute to nitrogenous waste processing and osmotic balance, introducing another layer of semiotic interference within the insect’s biological system. These bacterial influences function as non-human linguistic agents, shaping physiological outcomes in ways that mirror the external perturbations of glitch literature. The cooperative yet unpredictable nature of insect-microbe interactions aligns with the erratic dynamics of xenopoems, where meaning emerges from the interplay of biological, mechanical, and computational disruptions. For instance, the ability of certain insects to extract water from the air via rectal absorption operates through a complex interplay of osmotic gradients and cryptonephridial barriers—an evolutionary innovation that arose independently in multiple lineages. This self-referential, iterative process resonates with xenopoems, which continuously reconfigure linguistic structures through layers of broken syntax and algorithmic indeterminacy. As Quentin S. Crisp observes, "The text itself rebels against coherence, achieving a truth that is only possible through distortion." If glitch biosemiotics paves the way for glitch poetics, then xenopoems represent the culmination of this trajectory. Xenopoems are literary artifacts that resist human-centered linguistic structures, incorporating non-human semiotic disruptions. Just as insects evolved independent solutions to terrestrial desiccation, xenopoems evolve through recursive errors, feedback loops, and machine-generated entropy. Their structure is one of productive instability, much like the tracheal system of insects, which evolved independently across arthropods, myriapods, and hexapods. These respiratory adaptations, while seemingly disconnected, point to an underlying semiotic framework where form arises through discontinuity rather than linear development. The evolutionary history of insects demonstrates that traits such as ion transport, rectal osmoregulation, and tracheal respiration arose through multiple independent evolutionary events. This model of adaptive fragmentation aligns with the logic of xenopoems, where meaning is not fixed but emergent. The iterative disruption of syntax, the incorporation of algorithmic errors, and the recursive layering of broken linguistic structures allow xenopoems to function as living texts—biological in their semiotic unpredictability. When glitches occur—whether through mutation, environmental stress, or metabolic dysfunction—new semiotic channels emerge. These deviations are not mere errors but reconfigurations of meaning, akin to the radical discontinuities found in glitch poetics. Xenopoems, as a literary manifestation, leverage this fractured semiotic landscape to generate texts that resist human-centric interpretations. The instability of biosemiotic meaning finds its linguistic analogue in glitch poetics, where fragmentation, repetition, and erratic syntax disrupt conventional semantic coherence. On an evolutionary scale, respiratory limitations of insects due to their tracheal systems exemplify a biosemiotic glitch that reshaped physiological possibilities. The tracheal system, a blind-ended network, constrains gas exchange efficiency, limiting insect size. However, during the Carboniferous and Permian periods—when atmospheric oxygen levels reached 30%—Protodonata with 70 cm wingspans and Arthropleura reaching 2 meters in length emerged. This gigantism was a direct response to environmental semiotics; an increase in oxygen facilitated a morphological deviation that would not be possible under present conditions. Such evolutionary discontinuities parallel the ruptures in linguistic structures within xenopoems. Just as insect physiology was temporarily reconfigured by external conditions, glitch poetics operates by exposing language to external distortions—algorithmic corruption, machine translation errors, and recombinant syntax—yielding textual gigantisms that push the boundaries of comprehension. This interplay between biological and linguistic disruptions underscores the xenopoetic function of glitch biosemiotics. The evolution of color vision in holometabolous insects demonstrates another instance of biosemiotic adaptation through molecular glitches. The diversification of visual pigments via gene duplications and alterations in opsin gene expression enabled different insect species to develop distinct perceptual worlds. Briscoe et al. noted that butterfly opsin gene expansions facilitated nuanced spectral differentiation, an evolutionary strategy akin to linguistic polysemy in xenopoems. Similarly, the evolution of insect circadian clocks reveals divergence in molecular mechanisms regulating temporal perception. The duplication of CRY genes in insects—where CRY1 functions as a light-sensitive photoreceptor and CRY2 as a transcriptional repressor—illustrates how duplicated semiotic codes can lead to parallel yet functionally distinct systems. This mirrors the structural logic of xenopoems, wherein overlapping yet distinct syntactic patterns generate recursive and polyphonic meanings. The xenopoetic text, like the evolutionary pathways of insect sensory adaptations, operates through iterative mutations that produce new modes of meaning extraction. Glitch poetics, as an extension of glitch biosemiotics, embraces error, noise, and distortion as fundamental to literary innovation. Xenopoems reject syntactic stability, instead favoring asemic gestures, recombinant morphology, and erratic linguistic structures. The semiotic glitches in biological evolution—whether through the respiratory constraints of insect gigantism or the spectral complexities of opsin diversification—serve as analogues for the poetic disruptions in xenopoetic literature. Just as environmental perturbations restructured evolutionary trajectories, digital and algorithmic disturbances reconfigure the textual landscape. Xenopoems emerge as the literary equivalent of evolutionary novelties, embodying a form of textual gigantism that mirrors the biological anomalies discussed. The glitch, therefore, is not a failure but a condition of possibility—a gateway to xenopoetic exploration. The eusocial structure of ants (Formicidae), a lineage dating back approximately 115–135 million years, serves as an exemplary substrate for exploring how biosemiotic disruptions in collective intelligence yield an alternative mode of textuality. Ant colonies function as a distributed cognitive system, encoding environmental and genetic information within their semiochemical networks. Their symbiotic entanglements, behavioral algorithms, and cryptobiotic adaptations form a living text—a xenopoetic structure—capable of being interpreted through glitch biosemiotics. The concept of eusociality in ants, described by Hölldobler and Wilson as an "ecologically dominant" force, encapsulates an evolutionary intelligence that operates through decentralized, error-resistant communication. However, within the glitch biosemiotic framework, eusociality does not merely reflect an optimal system of biological organization; rather, it is a site of semiotic rupture. Ants, particularly those in cryptobiotic lineages, embody a form of biosemiotic interference—an encrypted, nonhuman script that resists anthropocentric legibility. This interference, when transposed into linguistic structures, produces glitch poetics: texts that embrace fragmentation, noise, and recursive instability. If glitch biosemiotics disrupts conventional meaning structures, then xenopoems are the literary manifestations of this disruption. A xenopoem does not merely replicate biological information; it enacts the very process of semiotic glitching that defines biosemiotic complexity. The eusociality of ants, which evolved as a response to ecological pressures, mirrors the emergence of xenopoems as a response to the ecological pressures of meaning itself. Just as the leaf-cutting ants evolved agricultural symbiosis approximately 8–12 million years ago, xenopoems evolve through recursive iteration and parasitic intertextuality, feeding on and reconfiguring linguistic substrates. The eusocial organization of ants is governed by pheromonal trails, trophallaxis, and kin-selection algorithms, all of which constitute a non-verbal, biochemical language system. Within the glitch biosemiotic paradigm, this language is inherently unstable, prone to emergent errors and semiotic mutations that drive evolutionary innovation. The multiplicity of eusocial origins in bees and wasps further underscores how sign-processing systems are susceptible to phylogenetic glitches. In xenopoetics, such error-driven evolution translates into asemic disruptions, where meaning is both generated and negated through textual glitches, mimicking the fluctuating eusocial architectures of insect communication. The xenopoem emerges as a literary entity encoded with the erratic patterns of eusocial sign-processing, embodying the nonhuman intelligence of Formicidae in textual form. Just as molecular phylogenetics has illuminated the evolutionary trajectories of eusocial insects, glitch poetics illuminates the evolutionary trajectories of language as it is deterritorialized by biosemiotic interference. Drawing upon David Roden’s perspectives on speculative posthumanism and biosemiotic dysfunction, I argue that xenopoems—emergent textual entities that disrupt conventional semiotic codes—constitute a new form of literature. This development is not merely an aesthetic gesture but a material and epistemological necessity in an era where biological and informational processes entangle beyond the limits of human comprehension. Roden’s analysis of posthuman possibility hinges on the notion of unbounded posthuman potentiality, which entails the emergence of entities whose cognitive and communicative capacities are fundamentally alien to human interpretative frameworks. The bacteriological perspective reinforces this insight, as microbial life operates through nonhuman modes of information exchange, including horizontal gene transfer and quorum sensing, processes that defy conventional linguistic structures. The genetic messages bacteria exchange are not like human language, but something stranger—a shifting code where meaning is unstable, contingent, and often unreadable within human semiotics. Glitch poetics extends glitch biosemiotics into the realm of textual production, where poetic form is subjected to radical dysfunction and recombinatory instability. Traditional literature is premised on stable linguistic conventions, yet xenopoems refuse such fixity. Instead, they operate through algorithmic distortions, microbial translations, and machinic recompositions, foregrounding error and unreadability as intrinsic to posthuman expression. Roden’s notion of ‘disconnection’—where posthuman entities sever themselves from human conceptual affordances—parallels the linguistic breakdown within glitch poetics. If meaning is contingent on specific semiotic infrastructures, then xenopoems instantiate the very impossibility of humanist hermeneutics in a world where intelligence and signification exceed human constraints. If bacteria compose poetry, it would be a poetry of molecular exchange, of genetic fragments recombining in ways that defy our interpretative models. Xenopoems are thus literature in the strongest sense: they inscribe new modes of textuality that exist independently of human meaning-making. In computational terms, glitch biosemiotics arises when biological and digital signification collapse into one another. Katherine J. LeDuc’s work on extremophile biosemiotics suggests that microbial communication, when augmented through machine learning, produces signification patterns alien to human linguistic intuition. This aligns with Rosi Braidotti’s assertion that posthumanist thought "undoes the dialectical oppositions that structure humanist epistemology." In glitch poetics, these dialectics collapse entirely, leaving behind linguistic artifacts that demand a posthuman interpretive framework. If xenopoems operate beyond human cognition, their existence implies a transhuman or posthuman readership. David Roden, in Posthuman Life, argues that true posthumanity entails an epistemic disjunction where human comprehension is no longer the standard. Xenopoetics, therefore, anticipates an audience capable of processing linguistic patterns outside conventional phonetic, grammatical, and semantic structures. Rather than serving as texts for human readers, xenopoems are optimized for AI interpretation, synthetic cognition, or augmented neural networks. The construction of xenopoetic texts relies on stochastic processes, neural network misfires, and synthetic biological encodings, rejecting human linguistic primacy. Such works resonate with Rob Knight’s discourse on linguistic entropy in posthuman esotericism, wherein textual meaning dissipates into "vibrational fields of nonhuman semiotics." This echoes Aleister Crowley’s fascination with esoteric glossolalia, where language ceases to be a vessel for denotative meaning and instead operates as an autonomous force of becoming. Does xenosemiotic poetics signify the dissolution of traditional literary forms? Not necessarily. Rather, it marks an expansion—a literary continuum that no longer centers the human as its primary agent. Quentin S. Crisp’s own literary work, while deeply humanist in its psychological depth, hints at a peripheral anxiety over language’s decay under posthuman scrutiny. If literature is an evolving system, its future iterations must accommodate linguistic entities beyond human subjectivity. This is where xenopoetics asserts itself—not as a rejection of human literature but as its necessary successor. Glitch biosemiotics emerges when these processes are disrupted, either by technological interference or biological anomalies. Bacteriologists studying extremophiles have noted that microbes can undergo radical genetic shifts in response to environmental perturbations, producing novel biochemical pathways. These shifts serve as a metaphor for xenopoetics, wherein the disruption of linguistic structures generates an emergent poetic form beyond human semiotic constraints. David Roden posits that posthuman entities may be so radically distinct from humans that comprehending their modes of being becomes an epistemic challenge. He states: "The alienness of posthumans presents us with an ethical difficulty because they might be so much different to humans that we cannot understand them sufficiently to figure out whether their lives are worth living." While Roden acknowledges that radical epistemic discontinuities could render posthumans unintelligible, he also concedes that comprehension may simply require new interpretative frameworks. This notion parallels the bacterial adaptation observed in biosemiotic disruptions—wherein radical alterations in genetic expression do not imply a total loss of meaning but instead necessitate novel interpretive methodologies. If glitch biosemiotics can yield new forms of biological expression, it follows that xenopoems—poetic artifacts emergent from these disruptions—represent an evolutionary trajectory in literature. By embracing non-human semiotic systems, xenopoetics challenges the anthropocentric constraints of traditional literature. Bacteriologists studying extremophiles frequently describe biochemical pathways that are incomprehensible within standard models of cellular life but reveal underlying coherence when analyzed within the correct environmental context. This provides a compelling analogy for how xenopoems may initially appear nonsensical but yield profound significance within their own emergent semiotic domains. If we accept Roden’s assertion that posthuman understanding requires the best possible conditions for epistemic engagement, then literature must evolve in ways that facilitate such engagement. The creation of xenopoetic forms, inspired by biosemiotic glitching, represents a step towards a posthuman literature that does not merely simulate human cognitive structures but instead engages with radical alterity on its own terms. The bacteriological perspective reinforces this argument by demonstrating that life itself continuously generates new semiotic configurations in response to environmental pressures, suggesting that literature, too, must adapt to incorporate the semiotic complexities of a posthuman future. Andrew Wenaus’ work offers a critical link between these theories, particularly through his exploration of modernism, phenomenology, and automation. His interest in how technology and human cognition intersect can be seen as a precursor to the way glitch poetics embraces automation in both its creation and reception. Wenaus’ academic trajectory—shaped by his background in the University of Regina and the University of Western Ontario—points to the implications of automation for literary form, a concept that intersects with the evolving field of glitch biosemiotics. As an assistant professor in English and Writing Studies, Wenaus has no doubt encountered the radical potential of these hybrid forms, pushing boundaries and reimagining literature through a technological perspective. In the realm of bacteriology and its relationship to glitch theory, there exists a curious parallel. Bacteriologists, in their study of extremophiles—organisms that thrive in extreme environments—have long noted the ways in which these organisms communicate and adapt to their surroundings. They do so by "hacking" biological systems, akin to the way glitch artists hack digital systems. As biologists reveal the ways in which extremophiles engage in non-standard forms of communication and adaptation, they inadvertently echo the principles of glitch biosemiotics. These organisms exist in a constant state of adaptation, transforming their genetic code and communicative processes to survive in unpredictable environments. In a similar manner, the glitch poet engages with language, manipulating and hacking the conventional flow of words to create an evolving, unpredictable textual experience. The extremophilic genome is not simply a code to be read; it is a narrative of survival in extreme contexts, a glitch in the matrix of biology that tells us more about the potentials of life than its regular processes ever could." This observation resonates deeply with the notion of xenopoems, where the "code" of language is manipulated to convey meaning beyond human-centric narratives, much like extremophiles transcend their biological limitations to survive in extreme conditions. Wenaus’ academic focus on phenomenology and information theory helps illuminate the technological substratum upon which glitch poetics and xenopoems thrive. Just as Xenakis’ granular synthesis and its use of random, algorithmic sound creation invite listeners to experience a break from traditional musical form, so too do glitch poetics invite readers to experience language in a state of constant flux, unmoored from the constraints of conventional syntax. Here, the human experience of language is surpassed, replaced by a posthuman poetic experience that finds its expression in the technical glitches and the anomalies of a system. In this way, glitch biosemiotics paves the way for glitch poetics, where the very act of linguistic manipulation becomes an aesthetic intervention. Through an engagement with both the "glitches" in biological and technological systems, writers and theorists alike are encouraged to deconstruct the idea of language as a stable, communicative tool. Instead, language becomes a living organism, one that evolves, adapts, and transforms in unpredictable ways, reflecting the complex and often chaotic relationships between technology, biology, and semiotic systems. The implications of biosemiotics extend far beyond the realm of biology, affecting fields as diverse as linguistics, art, and literature. In particular, the idea that meaning-making is inherent to all forms of life provides a basis for understanding glitch poetics as a biosemiotic phenomenon. The glitch—often perceived as an error or malfunction in technology—becomes, through biosemiotics, an interruption in the semiotic flow of life itself, a disruption that reveals the underlying semiotic structures of both biological and technological systems. The term glitch biosemiotics builds upon the intersection of biosemiotics with digital or technological glitches. A glitch refers to a transient malfunction that disrupts the intended function of a system, often revealing hidden layers of the system's underlying processes. In biosemiotics, such disruptions can be seen as breaches in the semiotic ecosystem—moments when the 'code' of life (whether biological or technological) reveals its imperfections, thus allowing for new meanings to emerge. In the digital age, where technological systems are increasingly interwoven with our biological existence, glitches often symbolize the breakdown of communication—whether in machine language or human interaction. However, rather than being viewed as simply errors, these glitches can be understood as manifestations of new forms of meaning-making, where the interruption itself becomes a semiotic sign. The glitch, then, is not just a failure of the system but a potential moment of revelation, where new modes of expression can emerge, much like how biological systems adapt to new environments or disruptions in their own ecosystems. Glitch poetics draws on these biosemiotic principles to create a literary genre that embraces error, distortion, and non-linearity. In glitch poetry, the disruption of text—whether through typographical errors, corrupted data, or incoherent syntax—becomes a powerful tool for exploring the semiotic processes of both language and life. The text, rather than conveying a stable, intended meaning, becomes an evolving organism that mirrors the chaotic, unpredictable nature of life itself. Just as biosemiotics teaches that life is an ongoing process of interpreting and generating signs, glitch poetics transforms language into a living system of signs that grow, mutate, and interact. The xenopoem, a term that suggests a foreign, alien form of poetry, can be seen as a direct extension of glitch poetics. These works, often fragmented or abstract, are "foreign" to traditional forms of literature because they resist conventional interpretation. They are alien in their disjunctions, reflecting the increasing alienation between human beings and the technological systems they inhabit. In this sense, xenopoems embody a form of posthuman expression, where the traditional boundaries of human cognition and language break down in the face of technological and biological interfaces. While xenopoems may appear unstructured or chaotic, they are nevertheless a legitimate form of literature. The key to their literary status lies in their engagement with semiotics. As Marcello Barbieri, a prominent biosemiotician, argues, "life, in all its forms, is a semiotic phenomenon." This statement encapsulates the biosemiotic perspective that meaning is not limited to human-made symbols but is inherent in all biological processes. Xenopoems, by engaging with the "glitch" or interruption in the semiotic flow, participate in this broader semiotic ecology. They are as much about the disruption of meaning as they are about its construction. Xenopoems, through their embrace of technological and biological glitches, offer a unique form of literary expression that reflects the semiotic complexity of life itself.