Digital Book Nook recently caught up with Rex Wilder, author of “A Quiet Place to Land.” We are excited to share this insightful interview with our readers today. 

When did you first discover that you enjoy writing and wanted to become a published author?

I’ve been making things up since I kindergarten. I thought it magic back then (and still do) that I could invent a world and then live in it. It felt to me from the beginning as if unpublished (even in a school paper) work might as well have been unwritten. If one speaks a language, there’d better be someone who sees and hears in that same language.

What do you consider your favorite and most challenging aspects of the writing process and your photography process?

I love order in my writing, specially my poetry: form, memorable language, and rhyme. It seems to me the best and most challenging way to pack in charged and chaotic content. I follow much of the same ardor in my photography: thank god a photo has borders!

Tell us about your latest release.

“A Quiet Place to Land” is a mix of words and images that offers readers a portal into the world of emotional safety, empathy, natural beauty, imagination, and a merciful release from our woes. It articulates in epigrammatic verbal reflections and digitally overpainted photographs my path to health after a period of mental distress, my “dark night of the soul” — walking though the iconic Venice Beach canals, with its wondrous world of egrets, row boats, and the changing moods of weather and light on water. A therapist told me that for her it feels like “a balm for the soul.”

How did you come up with the title of your book?

The wonderful title ultimately came from one of my editors, Molli Corcoran. We knew we wanted to communicate the notion of a bird’s wings being most useful in setting itself down, firmly, on the terra firma. We liked the symbolism: having functioning wings but leaving easy flight behind, of settling into voluntary groundedness and achieved safety.

What do you hope readers are able to get from reading your story?

I hope a reader will feel better, calmer, more peaceful after spending a few moments turning the pages of “A Quiet Place to Land.” I envision, or hear actually, a sigh of relief breathed into the fog of the everyday.

Who are some of your favorite authors?

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, Philip Larkin, Henri Cole, Seamus Heaney, Billy Collins, Elizabeth Bishop, Edna St. Vincent Millay

And favorite photographers/artists: Edward Weston, Sheila Metzner, Gordon Parks, Richard Avedon, Alfred Stieglitz, Dorothea Lange, Edward Steichen, Annie Leibovitz, Georgia O’Keefe, Camille Pissarro, Egon Schiele, Balthus, Anselm Kiefer, Basquiat, Keith Haring.

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers seeking publication?

Read widely and write often. You will find an audience.

Follow Rex Wilder:   Website

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rex Wilder is an award-winning poet and photographer. He is the author of four previously published books of poetry. His poetry collection, Open Late: New & Collected Poems (1979-2018), was published by Chatwin in 2018 and his latest book, A Quiet Place to Land was published by Chatwin in November, 2023. 

Wilder’s poetry has appeared in leading magazines such as Poetry, The New Republic, National Review, and the Yale, Harvard, Antioch, Georgia, and Poetry Ireland reviews. His poems have been featured over the decades in London’s Times Literary Supplement. A former regional director of the Poetry Society of America in L.A., Wilder helped establish Hollywood’s popular “Act of the Poet” reading series. 

The two-term U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins said this of Rex’s first book, Waking Bodies:

“In Rex Wilder’s poetry, the tired English of everyday use comes back to us refreshed and full of its original surprise. In a world glutted with poetry, that Wilder has found a new way to say the old things is a notable achievement.”

Inspired by early 20th century Pictorialists, Rex practices digital overpainting and written reflection to interpret his photography. This approach allows him to reimagine a moment—highlighting the soul and beauty of the image and fixing the glimmer of a moment in memory. He resides in Benedict Canyon, California.