Book Talk | Planetaria by Monica Ong

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ABOUT THE BOOK

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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Monica Ong is the author of Silent Anatomies published by Kore Press (2015). Her most recent series of astronomy-inspired visual poetry was exhibited at the Poetry Foundation and is the basis of her new book Planetaria (Proxima Vera, 2025). Her fine press poetry editions and literary art objects have been acquired by institutional collections worldwide. Ong is a 2024 United States Artists Fellow.

IN CONVERSATION WITH

Margaret Rhee is a poet, scholar, and new media artist. She is the author of Love, Robot (The Operating System, 2017), which won the Outstanding Achievement in Creative Writing: Poetry award from the Association of Asian American Studies. Rhee is an assistant professor and the chair of the art writing concentration in the creative writing MFA program at The New School. She lives in New York City.

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The former Queens Borough Poet Laureate (2010-2014), Paolo Javier has produced three albums of sound poetry with Listening Center (David Mason), including the  cassette LP/pamphlet Ur’lyeh/ Aklopolis, and the booklet/cassette EP Maybe the Sweet Honey Pours. His poetry is featured in Sean Hanley’s experimental documentary The Whelming Sea, and his collaboration with Lynne Sachs on her short film SWERVE, based on his book-length comics poem O.B.B., had its world premiere at BAM Cinemafest. The recipient of a Rauschenberg Foundation Artist Grant, Javier is the author of seven volumes of poetry, including the forthcoming Near Your Mirror Home (Stay On). Born and raised in Manila, he lives with his family in Jackson Heights, Queens, unceded Lenapehoking.