Film director (and former University of Iowa professor) Sasha Waters first recalls being struck by the work of Mary Oliver as a new parent, listening to A Prairie Home Companion in her Iowa City kitchen. Years later, PBS would ask her to make a documentary about the late Pulitzer Prize-winning poet for the American Masters series.
Now complete, Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World opens at Iowa City’s FilmScene on July 24, ahead of a panel discussion on July 28 with Waters and current University of Iowa professors Donika Kelly and Melissa Febos. Waters is excited to bring her documentary to the nonprofit theater she helped establish in 2011 as a founding board member.
Another local nonprofit, Iowa City Poetry, will host a poetry reading ahead of the panel with poems composed at Inspired by Oliver, a recent free workshop held at the PS1 Close House.
Donika Kelly led the Inspired by Oliver workshop for Iowa City Poetry, and appears in the documentary.
“Mary Oliver has … strong, clear ideas about how a poem worked — and how to approach writing,” she said. “Even if it’s not my practice, and it’s not exactly how I approach poetry, having someone with such clear standards makes it possible to figure out where I differ.”
Kelly was surprised when Waters, who she met through a poetry reading in Virginia, asked her to participate in the film. Kelly never met Oliver, but when she first stepped into a teaching role, it was Oliver she reached for, and continues to introduce to students at the University of Iowa. Through courses such as “Midwestern Poetry,” Kelly helps her undergraduate students see a Midwest “that holds and shelters many different kinds of peoples.”
Midwestern poetry, she says, “is incredibly queer.” It feels poignant that as queer Iowans flee the state, Waters’ documentary surfaces to remind us that a Midwest upbringing can cultivate remarkably attentive and distinct voices, shaped by the land that remains.
Founding director of Iowa City Poetry, Lisa Roberts, emerged as a writer and poet in university settings and worked for four years to set up a community event with Kelly. Roberts moved to Iowa City in part for the literary community in 2011. “I taught at universities for 30 years. And I saw who we weren’t reaching: the community. So that’s, in some ways, Iowa City Poetry’s mission,” Roberts said. “Back then, once we got here and we looked around, it wasn’t happening. It wasn’t trickling down from the university. It wasn’t moving out from the centers of learning and out.”
So, Roberts worked with people like Jennifer Colville, founding editor of Prompt Press and director of Porchlight Literary Arts Center, to create community-accessible poetry. Together, they co-organize free generative (or “free-gen”) community workshops, which occur four times a month.
Roberts sees the initiative as filling a void that UI used to fill. “We used to do summer camps for free. You know, for free. What a university should be doing for the community, right?”
While many are drawn to campus for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, which undeniably has immense impact on writing at home and abroad, challenges persist, including funding, staff and time constraints. In 2025, the Iowa Youth Writing Project, for which Roberts served as assistant director, was closed by UI’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, along with the Iowa Summer Writing Festival.
Colville continues to offer affordable half-day youth writing camps at Porchlight each summer. The Iowa Youth Writing Project’s website also states that it will be re-opening their doors this coming fall, “with a brand-new headquarters in the greater Iowa City area.”
Waters, who moved to Iowa City in 2000, can relate to Roberts. “Iowa City is cooler than when I moved there,” she told LV. “[But] the university didn’t do it any favors, right? They kept cutting faculty, cutting salaries, cutting programs, cutting the humanities. I mean, it was like all of these interesting creative things related to arts and writing and the humanities happened in spite of the university, rather than as a result of it.”
Waters recalls the end of FilmScene’s first official board meeting at the Iowa City Public Library, where she pulled out her wallet to contribute towards the $300 fee necessary to establish the theater as a nonprofit. Waters credited institutions like FilmScene and the Englert’s Mission Creek Festival with nourishing the local arts community.
Despite this push-and-pull with academia, Waters found her stride as faculty in the UI Cinema Department — the first program to establish a Film Studies Ph.D. in 1960 — where she began to find her voice as a filmmaker.
“I definitely connected to the poetic, avant-garde, lyrical experimental film tradition that was so central to the MFA program in particular, but to the film program in general, at Iowa,” Waters said. “Making a lot of short work while I was there helped me to find the voice that would allow me to make some of these longer films as well.”
Around the time Waters was first struck by Oliver’s work in her kitchen, she formed her very own production company named Pieshake Pictures, a reference to Hamburg Inn’s pie shakes. Another Iowa City connection? Meghan Simms, her co-editor for the film, is also a former University of Iowa student.
Waters, Simms and the rest of the team behind the film hope it will help Mary Oliver, already a popular poet, reach an even larger audience — one that will recognize the late poet’s talents in ways other institutions have woefully ignored.
“I think it’s safe to say that the kind of poetry Mary Oliver writes was not taught at or promoted or celebrated by the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, for example,” Waters said.
Roberts echoed Wilson’s sentiments. Throughout her training, she found “there was an elitist disregard for Mary Oliver,” something she herself had to unlearn. So when Kelly agreed to lead the “Inspired by Oliver” workshop, Roberts was thrilled.
Speaking with LV after the session, Roberts said she felt the workshop was particularly wonderful, as Kelly brought challenging and accessible poems, questions and prompts. Forty-three attendees gathered on a Sunday afternoon, elbow to elbow at Public Space One’s Close House, representing a range of ages, genders, backgrounds and familiarity with poetry.
“For me, it was peak Iowa City poetry,” Roberts said.
For some in attendance, it wasn’t the first poetry workshop they attended, but their first writing workshop altogether. One first-timer shared with Roberts, “I’ve been getting up my courage to come to something like this. I think I’m looking for an opportunity to, you know, talk with other writers and to get some feedback.”
This attendee’s experience seems in line with the mission statement found on the website for Iowa City Poetry: “Anyone can write. And everyone who wants to write should have access to the wealth of Iowa City’s Writing Culture.”
Roberts invited all to submit a poem they began at “Inspired by Oliver.” Selected poems will be read ahead of the screening at FilmScene attended by Waters and Kelly on July 28. One goal for the community reading, Roberts said, is “to show a cross-section of writers in Iowa City who still respond deeply and creatively to Oliver’s work.”
It’s a community-forward gesture that celebrates emerging writers, emphasis on celebration. “I mean, how often do we get to have poetry parties on that scale?”
Roberts hopes the event reminds people of the power of poetry as well as its accessibility. Waters, Kelly and Roberts may each have ties in academia, but like Oliver, they long to linger in the deceptively difficult act of paying attention and connecting the arts to community.
Oliver herself remained outside of academia, even penning a A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry so she could stay home and write. As shown in the documentary, Oliver, already a “pop poet,” was successful on the lecture circuit near the end of her life. In a sense, Waters is stepping into her shoes as she works on “getting this film out into the world and bringing people to Mary’s poetry.”
