A Door into the Wild: Poetry and Art by Ellery Akers

A Door into the Wild: Poetry and Art won the 2024 Blue Light Award and will be published September 24, 2024.

Order: Amazon | Book Passage | Pt Reyes Books

“…An eloquent delight to page through, one poem and hand-drawn illustration at a time. A fascinating, reflective, thought-provoking and memorable read from cover to cover….Especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, and college/university library Contemporary American Poetry and Landscape Art collections.”
– The Midwest Book Review

“It is rare to find an artist who can wed their mark-making to the music of their poetry. Ellery Akers is one of these exceptional creatures. Her book, A Door into the Wild, is a sublime conjunction of word and image and an invitation to the reader to participate in an extraordinary conversation between dazzling drawings and subtle, heart-rending poems. This book is a gift.”
– Gary Young, author of Even So: New and Selected Poems and That’s What I Thought

“In her newest book…poet Ellery Akers brings all her senses to bear in her experience of the natural world. That world is a place filled with music: the sounds of birdsong, the clopping of a horse, moths tapping against a glass…. It is a place where fog blurs the trees and covers the moon with gauze. There is the smell of wet dust, of smoke. There is is the tangy taste of fresh pine needles. This is a world of poetry as prose, and prose offered up by the spoonful: each poem is just a few lines, each poem contains a universe. …..exquisitely elegant poetry.” 
Doris Ober, Point Reyes Light 

“Ellery Akers is a poet and a naturalist, and a devoted observer of the natural world. Her drawings have the casual authority of the Scottish artist Joan Eardley, scale shifting between forest and meadow, sunlit pond and shimmering ocean. In her gorgeous new book, A Door into the Wild, those drawings are intercut with a series of brief but radiant prose poems. Encounters with nature are at the heart of her work: epiphany, delight, and interspecies communion.”
– Christian McEwen, author of In Praise of Listening and World Enough and Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down