A Multimedia Poetry Perspective
Are we too crowded with frenzy / and the blinding fire of one war or another / to see the light we make? Must we wait so long for revelation / to burst out of the pitch dark, for recognition of the harm repeated / in every era? The truth still moving toward us, trying to catch us.
These are but a few of the questions asked in conceptual poet Barbaria Maria’s Planetarium program “Celestial Earth: We Are Here … but when?” Presented by Maria’s SoundBone Media group along with the Versant Power Astronomy Center and Jordan Planetarium at UMO, it’s an epic multimedia poetry event just in time for a much-needed spring break. This is poetry raised to astronomical proportions (pun intended), short films that wander into the core of who we might become, and a sonic journey to the Big Bang and back, down to the molten center of everything. The main event takes us through the universe and into our wondering inner selves as we ride our planet through an epic soundscape created by SoundBone Media with audio engineer Lincoln Clapp for Maria’s 2024 long-form poem “Celestial Earth” with the stars and planets of the spacious black universe all around us, piloted by the center’s director, Shawn Laatsch. Join us for the films When She Became a Buffalo (2012), Since We Can’t Go Back (2015), and Convergence (2016), each created by the poet and subtitled for the hearing impaired; and the soundscape “Celestial Earth,” which will occur only in dark starlight without titles or interpreter.
Three showings of this program will be presented on April 19th at 2pm, and April 26 at 2pm and 7pm. Admission is only $10! Seating is limited! Chapbooks with the four featured poems and CDs of Celestial Earth will be available after the show.
Tickets may be purchased online, by phone at 207.581.1341, or at our ticket box office prior to the show.
