October 12 marked the premiere of the new Netflix original film The Kindergarten Teacher, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal as the titular teacher. The film follows Gyllenhaal’s protagonist in her attempt to recognize the prodigious talent of a 5-year-old poet.

The film also features original poetry from contemporary American poets Kaveh Akbar, author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James Books) and Ocean Vuong, author of Night Sky With Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon Press), who were contacted by Gyllenhaal and director Sara Colangelo for help. Poet Dominique Townsend, author of The Weather & Our Tempers (Brooklyn Arts Press), was also commissioned to pen the poems of Gyllenhaal’s character, Lisa.

On the Poetry Foundation’s VS podcast, Akbar commented that he was “reading in bed, and I got this email on my phone from Maggie Gyllenhaal and I looked at it and said, ‘This certainly isn’t real.’ … It became this really, really interesting project. It was almost like translating, where I had the strictures given to me, like, they had to be fairly short poems using only vernacular native to a 5-year-old.… It was this really awesome, fun game to play.”

Netflix announced its acquisition of the film in February of 2018. The Kindergarten Teacher received the directing award for U.S. dramatic film at the Sundance Film Festival.

Photo Credit: Netflix