Planetaria: Visual Poetry

Rewriting the sky from a female perspective, Monica Ong invites readers into the intimate cosmology of Planetaria, utilizing the visual language of astronomy to explore the precarious territories of motherhood, women in science, and diaspora identity. This collection examines the power struggles that myth-making elicits through the alchemy of text and image hybrids. With a foreword by art critic and poet John Yau, these poems move through constellations, across ancestral skies, turning wide-eyed insomnia into nocturnes in search of home. This full color collection includes gallery views of the poems as installations, fine press and interactive works, giving full expression to Ong’s interdisciplinary practice of visual poetry. If poetry and astronomy were to throw an art party, this one welcomes audiences across disciplines and cultures to imagine new cosmographies where everyone belongs.