Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver’s life and career are explored in the new documentary Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World, directed by Sasha Waters. Deadline reported that the film has opened at IFC Center in New York City and will debut today at Laemmle theaters in Los Angeles before expanding to select theaters nationwide.

“She’s a poet for people who love poetry, but she’s also a poet for people who might think they don’t really like poetry or might not really know about poetry or might feel intimidated or bored by poetry,” Waters said. “She invites people into the work at every level, and she’s not interested in playing with language for the sake of playing with language…. I think she’s interested in asking the viewer to share an experience or to reflect on their own experience.”

Noting that there is “pressure, I think, to put celebrities in documentaries,” Waters observed: “So, for me, it was really important that if we were going to do that, there needed to be a real connection, like why are they in the film? Helena Bonham Carter, there’s a TikTok of her reading a Mary Oliver poem. So that’s how I found out she was a Mary Oliver fan. Stephen Colbert told a guest on his show that he sent the poem ‘The Summer Day’ to his children on the first day of summer every year.”