By Todd Boss, Motionpoems

Think poetry is for nerds and old ladies? Some of the world’s most trend-forward hipsters are saying, “no way.”

Last year, we challenged some of America’s hottest advertising, production, and design companies to turn contemporary poems into short films. Several of the companies we contacted work on major studio pictures for which they’re paid millions.

We offered $1,000.

The response from these cool people: “Cool.”

A still from Evan Holm’s motionpoem adaptation of W. S. Merwin’s poem, “Antique Sound,” to premiere May 22, 2014 at the Walker Art Center.

On May 22 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Motionpoems will unveil the results of a year’s work by major pop musicians, moviemakers, and mad men who embraced our challenge and unleashed their talents on new poems by Pulitzer winners and early-career writers alike. The short films—19 in all—range in style from grunge found-footage documentary, VFX/animation, multidisciplinary sound sculpture, and live action.

Many of the artists who took up our challenge couldn’t believe their luck: amidst our stash of poems they found poets whose work they were already reading or had long admired. Others who rarely read poetry discovered a new richness of text and freedom of interpretation rare in their industry.

“Who is the client?” they asked. “Not the poet, not the publisher, and not Motionpoems,” we answered. “The poem is the client. Serve the poem.”

When a producer and I co-founded Motionpoems 5 years ago, we did not anticipate the energy with which creatives on both sides of the poetry/film equation would take to it. We thought we were trading in taboos, mixing genres better left distinct. We experienced that pang of anxiety that strikes just before the first guest arrives for a party at which you’ve endeavored to mix people from two different facets of your life: Will they like each other? Will they have anything to say? Will they argue? Have I made a terrible mistake?

But people always surprise you. After our world premiere at the Walker on May 22, we’ll release the surprises monthly at motionpoems.com over the coming year. Subscribe and join the party, and we think you’ll say, “cool.”

A still from Alicia Reece’s motionpoem adaptation of Peter Jay Shippy’s poem, “Western Civilization,” to premiere at the Walker Art Center May 22, 2014.