Poet Jen Bervin has been making poems that live in the body—and no, that’s not an expression!

Inspired by the properties of silk, Bervin, who is also an artist, has been writing a book-length poem about silk from the perspective of the silkworm in nanoscale on a liquid silk biosensor (in six-character chains), according to The Huffington Post.

“For the structure of the poem,” the article reads, “Bervin mimicked the form silk itself takes at the DNA level, a beta shape that moves back and forth in a snakelike motion. Coincidentally, silkworms move in a similar pattern when inscribing a silk cocoon. A bi-directional text common in Ancient Greece known as boustrophedon takes a similar shape.”

Silk is completely biocompatible, which means that the body will accept it regardless of where in the body it ends up.

Supported by the assistance of nanotechnology and biomedical labs, textile archives, and medical libraries, Bervin’s project, “Silk Poem,” has taken over three years so far.

Bervin is currently a visiting artist at the Vermont Studio Center. Read an excerpt from her poem, or watch her interview with Creative Capital.

Related news: Over the last decade, poet Christian Bök has himself been working on a project called The Xenotext: a plan to encipher poetry within an immortal bacterium’s genome.

Photo Credit: Creative Capital.