Launching on February 14th 2020: my poetry pamphlet, Winter with Eva, will be arriving with V Press. Order your copy, here.

 

First light

I twist the blinds

screw open the view.

The first light

doesn’t wake you.

 

Nothing moves on the street ­­–

no cat no crisp packet

no slow black streak

of the electric car.

 

This could be a jigsaw of anywhere

with the clouds stuck down.

I watch you sleep. Your breath

your pull for air.

© Elaine Baker ‘Winter with Eva’

Find me in:

The Emma Press Anthology of Contemporary Gothic Verse, October 2019 (order a copy, here)

Words for the Wild webzine. (Text + audio recording) July 2019

Envoi magazine (Cinnamon Press) Issue 182, Summer 2019

Following my 1 day Residency in the WS Graham Exhibition Constructing Spaces, my poems Search Party and Truth Tapes can be read on the National Poetry Library website, along with my blogpost about the residency. March 2019

The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle, where I was commissioned to write a poem in response to work by artist Fred Uhlman, August 2018 

The Interpreter’s House  Issue 68, July 2018

Proletarian Poetry, June 2018

Mslexia magazine Issue 75, Sept/Oct/Nov 2017

Dream Catcher magazine  Issue 35, Summer 2017

The North Issue 56, 2016

Snakeskin 192 (Webzine) January 2013

Poetic Republic: Poems to Talk About  (E-book) December 2012

Brittle Star Magazine Issue 30, Spring 2012

Obsessed with Pipework, Winter 2012

Gok Wan Me

Gok Wan my body.

Bear Grylls over my hills.

Freddie Mercury alert me and

Scorsese dilate me.

Tarantino my velcro.

Van Gogh me like toffee and

Jamie froth and spill me.

John Lennon my delusion.

Freddie Flintoff all my clothes

and Ewan McGregor all over me

until I

Gok Wan my body.

© First published in Brittle Star, issue 30, Spring 2012

 

Growing Up Going Up North

 I’m taller than you lately

still out of habit you inadvertently

strap me up snug on the backseat.

In the front you speak mutely

counting the miles earnestly

eyes on the road responsibly.

 

You pay the bill at the pub where we stop

and I sit dumb, my mouth bottled up

with angry confusion, a bipolar flower

sitting on my strapped-up words

just in case they escape

and slap you in your grown-up face.

© First published in The North, issue 56, July 2016