Planetaria: Visual Poetry and the Asian-American Avant Garde

Name: Planetaria: Visual Poetry and the Asian-American Avant Garde
Start: 2025-09-18T19:00:00-05:00
Location: Arts + Literature Laboratory

Schedule

Thu, 18 Sep, 2025 at 07:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

Arts + Literature Laboratory | Madison, WI

Join us on September 18, 2025 for a special evening with visual poet Monica Ong, who will present a multi-media poetry reading from her new collection Planetaria, followed by a conversation with poet and scholar Timothy Yu, professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of the foremost experts of the Asian-American avant-garde. Enjoy an exploration of the experimental impulse of visual poetry and how the ghosts of Chinese star histories and family diaspora meet us on this crossroad of art and literature.
Rewriting the sky from a female perspective, Monica Ong invites readers into the intimate cosmology of Planetaria with poems that utilize the visual language of astronomy to explore the precarious territories of motherhood, women in science, and diaspora identity, while navigating the complex landscape of the Chinese night sky. With a foreword by poet and art critic John Yau, these poems move through constellations, across ancestral skies, turning wide-eyed insomnia into nocturnes in search of home.
Presented as an immersive poetry reading and cultural conversation, this event is friendly for all ages and offers audience development for lovers of contemporary poetry, astronomy, letterpress and graphic design, art and science crossovers, women’s history, Asian American experience, and visual poetics.