WILL BAKER
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wbillustrator.bsky.social
WILL BAKER
@wbillustrator.bsky.social
62 followers 46 following 25 posts
London-based writer, illustrator and printmaker | 183cm tall (83cm without legs)
Mainly a work-in-progress
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wbillustrator.bsky.social
‘Copse’
by Will Baker

Towards the end of summer,
when the warmth
bunches like cobwebs of orange sun,
we go our separate ways.
[…]

www.instagram.com/reel/DJ6oLcP...

#Vss365 #writingcommunity #londonwriter #londonillustrator #sadpoem #heartbreaks #naturepoetry
May 21, 2025 at 4:57 PM
wbillustrator.bsky.social
‘Clarity’

When I say I want to write about love,
What I really mean is
I want to write about you

#writingcommunity #londonwriter #literarymagazine #vss365 #lovepoem #lovesick
May 20, 2025 at 8:56 AM
wbillustrator.bsky.social
All we need, sometimes, is confirmation that we’re in the right place doing the right things—publication of one of my poems is certainly that!

My poem ‘Park in Early Hours’ as seen in Seedlings IV: Winter issue.

#poetry #poem #wip #Vss365 #prompt #poetrycommunity #blueskypoetry #writingcommunity
‘Park in Early Hours’ by Will Baker First published in Seedlings IV: Winter 2025 Slow-burning flighty souls, scarce and singly flickering in the glazed shadow of the ovum day—the final splatters from a paintbrush wiped on a rag. These sprouted spores grow for the sky's heavy eye to burn through its cirrus lashline, runner through the trees and the old man on the bench as they pass. The fox watches a boy stumbling through the flowerbeds, music still in his hair, eats a chip then throws the rest in a bin. The dawn's chorus draws homeward. ******** A poem written during the first lockdown back in 2020 that cherishes outdoor spaces and the unsaid relationships and ecology between people and nature. Showing the inside of my “Mission Control” notebook where I organise my thoughts, ideas, and goals across all enterprises (work, personal, creative). Here is my mind map of ideas for creative pursuits specifically and at the top is the goal “Get Published”. Beneath is a progress bar counting to 4 indicating my goal to get publish 4x this year. The first number has been ticked off in cyan pen A flat lay of the poem as printed in the Seedlings IV: Winter issue. This poem is hand printed using the traditional letterpress method where metal type is arranged into a chase by hand before ink is rolled on the letters and a print pulled. You can see the imperfections and the texture of the ink and paper characterised by this print method.
May 19, 2025 at 12:41 PM
Reposted by WILL BAKER
stevewestby.bsky.social
each moment tabulated
not in dollars
but opportunity
to see
to hear
to pull the outcast
a little closer
whispering
you have spent lifetimes in wait

I am here

#vss365
Cost
April 20, 2025 at 11:57 AM
Reposted by WILL BAKER
lenaozge.bsky.social
"A Rose Shoulders Up" by Mosab Abu Toha for #smallpoemsunday 🥀

@tomsnarsky.bsky.social
April 20, 2025 at 9:03 AM
wbillustrator.bsky.social
'Turning the Corner'

Carried on the spring sea-spray,
the chiffchaff returns,
its warbling announcement of
days stretching.
It’s a promise of more chances to change.
[…]

#poetry #poem #wip #Vss365 #prompt #poetrycommunity #blueskypoetry #writingcommunity #NaPoWriMo @poetrysociety.bsky.social
‘Turning the Corner’ by Will Baker Carried on the spring sea-spray, the chiffchaff returns, its warbling announcement of days stretching. It’s a promise of more chances to change. Perhaps this time, I will teach you my voice. Not its sound or its timbre but its place in which to find a home. Commit it to memory the way I know each cell of your body by name— this one is Peace, that one, Longing. It will take effort. It will take a great bravery. On my part. How crucial I thought it to read the words between your shoulder blades when, really, what was more important was tracing the line with my finger to keep track of where I was. And how loud I should sing for you to hear. **** A poem about saying being vulnerable in response to the #NaPoWriMo prompt ‘turning a corner'
April 19, 2025 at 6:23 PM
wbillustrator.bsky.social
My MA in Comparative Literature is now…complete. After 2-and-a-bit years and one full-time job, it’s all wrapped up, and I’m feeling particularly chuffed #masters #uni #dissertation #MA #comparativeliterature #literature
March 25, 2025 at 10:41 AM
wbillustrator.bsky.social
@baddestmamajama.bsky.social
Mary Oliver poems are so amazing because you’ll be like “I feel bereft and hopeless and so alone” and she’ll be like “ok, but have you ever really thought about moss?” And it turns out you haven’t. Tweet by @baddestmamajama
March 11, 2025 at 7:16 AM
Reposted by WILL BAKER
rabihalameddine.bsky.social
A beautiful poem
After Twelve Days of Rain by Dorianne Laux
www.divasofverse.com/2017/10/afte...
After Twelve Days of Rain by Dorianne Laux
After Twelve Days of Rain I couldn’t name it, the sweet sadness welling up in me for weeks. So I cleaned, found myself stan...
www.divasofverse.com
March 2, 2025 at 1:27 AM
wbillustrator.bsky.social
‘Lenten’

Each day, the sun comes earlier.
I see it creep beneath
the door and the dancing
shadows of March.

[…]

#poetry #poem #wip #Vss365 #prompt #pomeranian #poetrycommunity #blueskypoetry #writingcommunity
Lenten by Will Baker Each day, the sun comes earlier. I see it creep beneath the door and the dancing shadows of March. We nearly forgot how to know each other. I go to the park I think of as yours, and the pond is the only eye that sees the blackthorn blossom. Among the trees with matchstick buds waiting to be struck: a woman walks her pomeranian nosing the crocuses, a squirrel flicks its tail. On a bench, two people bring their knees closer together, and a man hugs his son. It's like you've taught me to remember. ***** A poem about learning to open you heart for others in response to the #Vss365 prompt ‘pomeranian’
March 8, 2025 at 4:29 PM
Reposted by WILL BAKER
birdheartedgirl.bsky.social
there's a sadness
threaded through
all beauty...
in art and nature
and in people too
there, in the darkness
at the roots [and even
in their absence]—
a cut flower still opens
and leans into the light
March 7, 2025 at 7:33 PM
Reposted by WILL BAKER
allysonjoule.bsky.social
Let him rest beneath
the shifting green,
where the wind
hums low and steady,
where roots hold
fixed in the earth,
and nothing asks him
to be more.

#vss365 #poetry #copse
March 7, 2025 at 3:18 PM
wbillustrator.bsky.social
‘Copse’

Towards the end of summer,
when the warmth
bunches like cobwebs of orange sun,
we go our separate ways.

[…]

#poetry #poem #wip #Vss365 #prompt #copse #poetrycommunity #blueskypoetry #writingcommunity
‘Copse’ by Will Baker Towards the end of summer, when the warmth bunches like cobwebs of orange sun, we go our separate ways. Mirgate home, red admiral. Carry on the refracted colours, your joyful scales, a latent memory of your smile. Lips curl. The trees' leaves. Against the push-pin groves of the landscape, autumn blushes. Go to the place where the leaves fall slowest still. There, I may finally speak freely. From the heart, one word— stay **** A poem about saying good-bye in response to the #Vss365 prompt ‘copse’
March 7, 2025 at 3:23 PM
Reposted by WILL BAKER
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #vss365 and to #copse
Cemetery One January night I drive the cemetery road. On one side, the sodium glow of lampposts and the warmth of haphazard curtains. The other unhomed, where a lop-sided darkness passes in pulses between battlements of municipal stone. Then, deep within those depths, a knot of coloured lights, incongruous and fanciful as a rainbow's embers. A few days later I return on foot, unsettled by those thumb-nail illuminations... and all around a stillness, draining, like an emptied playground. I leave the path for the unmoled mounds, wading ripples of a loamy sea. A drunken crow watches, considers, and then half-follows me. A grave is found by a copse of plinths and posts, but the bulbs are now expired: by day more a warning, strung out as cheap barbed wire. I feel ashamed travelling far too lightly, without the lugging of a personal grief. That neon’d loss, unrequited. I wish I had not gone gawking for a name, but now connected to those lights or rather, the deeper darkness they became.
March 7, 2025 at 6:10 AM
Reposted by WILL BAKER
psconway.bsky.social
-
i held you
your breath folding inward
a wave erasing itself at the shore

they say the soul arcs toward god
but i have seen its involution
the way Prometheus dreamt of wholeness
and woke to the hawk

the way love tightens
our throats to silence
then returns to sea
-

#vss365 #poetrysky #writesky
March 6, 2025 at 4:48 PM
wbillustrator.bsky.social
#Vss365

’Snail’

[…]

The snail, climbing the branch,
does not feel this torment but carries
its involute self within a globe
and makes a home there.

[…]
#involution #poem #poetry #wip
’Snail’ by Will Baker Nothing less than the abandonment of folding ourselves. Sweet cruelty. There are no rules to our names as there are, a sheet of paper. Every new crease brings an older face closer. The snail, climbing the branch, does not feel this torment but carries its involute self within a globe and makes a home there. Learn peace. Return. Each day, like the snail or the moon lifting itself from the mountain. ******** A poem on self-acceptance in response to the #Vss365 prompt ’Involution’.
March 6, 2025 at 11:21 AM
wbillustrator.bsky.social
‘I know now why it is you ask of a wound—
you were never shown how to heal.’

Final verse of a work-in-progress poem about depression and grief.

#poem #smallpoem #poetry #grief #micropoetry #wip #writer
Remember, this does not have to mean the end of your life. Open the window and let the jackdaw feast. I know now why it is you ask of a wound— you were never shown how to heal. Final verse of a poem which includes themes of depression, anxiety, grief and pain.
March 5, 2025 at 11:54 AM
Reposted by WILL BAKER
chembarathi.bsky.social
There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away. - Jane Kenyon
#Poetry #LiteratureSky 💙📚👀
HAPPINESS There's just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away. And how can you not forgive? You make a feast in honor of what was lost, and take from its place the finest garment, which you saved for an occasion you could not imagine, and you weep night and day to know that you were not abandoned, that happiness saved its most extreme form for you alone. No, happiness is the uncle you never knew about, who flies a single-engine plane onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes into town, and inquires at every door until he finds you asleep mid-afternoon as you so often are during the unmerciful hours of your despair. It comes to the monk in his cell. It comes to the woman sweeping the street with a birch broom, to the child whose mother has passed out from drink. It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker, and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots in the night. It even comes to the boulder in the perpetual shade of pine barrens, to rain falling on the open sea, to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.
March 5, 2025 at 8:28 AM
Reposted by WILL BAKER
forgottenpoets.bsky.social
.
From the latest issue of #ForgottenPoets
—Alfred Kreymborg (1915)
Easily one of my favourite poems of all time!

#poetry #poem #poems
—: Clay :— I wish there were thirteen gods in the sky. One blessing won't do. Or even one god in me. I can't shape this thing alone.
March 4, 2025 at 10:58 PM
Reposted by WILL BAKER
readalittlepoem.bsky.social
“A horse gives way / to another horse and then suddenly there are / two horses, just like that. That’s how I loved you.”

— Ada Limón
.
.
.

This poem appeared in The Carrying by Ada Limón, published by Milkweed Editions, 2018. Shared here with deep gratitude.
March 4, 2025 at 2:02 PM
wbillustrator.bsky.social
This evening’s ramblings #poety #smallpoem #poem #lovesick #WIP
March 4, 2025 at 7:05 PM
wbillustrator.bsky.social
I’m not asking for a lot
#poetry #smallpoem #lovepoem
”But I don’t want plenty,” I think when you tell me of the fish in the sea. A short poem by Will Baker reflecting on unrequited love. The speaker expresses a desire for less, not wanting "plenty," in contrast to the idea of an abundance of options, represented by the "fish in the sea" that another person mentions. The poem suggests a deeper longing for something more meaningful than just having many choices.
March 3, 2025 at 8:24 AM