Poet Christian Bök explains his intent for inserting a poem, "The Xenotext", into strings of DNA in bacteria:
[The poem is] written in such a way that, when it's translated into this gene sequence, and then implanted, it can cause the organism it's implanted in to produce a viable protein in response – a protein that is itself a completely different poem. So I'm genetically engineering a bacterium that won't just archive my own text in its DNA, but also becomes a machine for writing a poem in response.
The Dish 