"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 poet and conceptual artist Barbaria Maria’s Planetarium program “Celestial Earth: We Are Here … but when?” an epic multimedia poetry experience raised to astronomical proportions (pun intended!). Three short films that wander into the core of who we might become, and one sonic journey into Deep Space and back, down to the molten center of everything. The centerpiece is Maria’s 2024 long-form poem “Celestial Earth” held in a soundscape of terrestrial life and elementals, as we navigate the stars and planets of the spacious black universe, piloted by planetarium director, Shawn Laatsch.

Join us for When She Became a Buffalo (2012), Since We Can’t Go Back (2015), and Convergence (2016), each short created by the poet and subtitled for those hard of hearing, and the starlit Celestial Earth that occurs only as sound under the Planetarium’s cosmic dome.

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.

For Information and tickets, see https://astro.umaine.edu or call the Planetarium at (207) 581-1341 or find the box office at 167 Rangeley Road, Orono, on the UMO campus.