For World Poetry Day, here’s an Ohio preschooler’s poem animated by Ukrainian artist Stas Santimov. It’s from a project called Preschool Poets:

Old snakes, loose teeth, hot tubs, and ugly people in your face.
This is the world when you are four.

For nearly a decade, resident artist Nancy Kangas led a poetry program for preschool-aged children at Columbus Early Learning Centers on the near east side of Columbus. She was struck with how clearly her kids wrote about what they loved and feared. They want bullets to relax, lions to roar, and kids to climb up to the sun.

Nancy and documentary filmmaker Josh Kun asked award-winning international artists to animate these poems, and the resulting hand-crafted animations show a depth and complexity of expression we don’t expect from four-year olds. The films are fueled by the children’s untethered imaginations, but they open a portal to the real world of growing up in the inner city.

Thanks to Maria Popova for highlighting this. You can read the text of the poem there, or at the project site.