Artist Profile: Emilie Zoey Baker

I first came across this delightful poet last year, through her playful poem:

I have a hat with tiny woolen ears

I have a hat with tiny woolen ears
 
When I put it on I hear secret things.
I didn’t know it when I bought it but
I pick up sounds I didn’t know existed.
 
I can hear my cat dreaming
her thoughts click like knitting needles.
Rocks sing low deep songs with no human words
trees make jokes about the rain
their laughter sounds like one thousand miniature gongs.
I can hear fossils inside mountains,
they turn in their sleep.
 
Every time a match is struck I hear the flame meet the candle,
it squeals with delight.
When leaves fall in autumn they hum to the ground
most people hear crunching
but I  hear orange brown harmony.
 
I can hear clouds decide when it’s time to rain,
the sun closing it’s eyes every night
and stars make the strangest noise when they appear,
like a cartoon diamond being dropped down
stairs made of glass.
 
I can hear rivers stretch like yoga to the ocean
and the smallest of voices from the smallest of seeds
asking for the soil in a language I’ve never heard before.
I don’t know why I can understand it but I can.
 
I hear snow land like sock footsteps and
underneath waves like lemonade.
With this hat I hear people falling in love,
like water rushing from a dam
and heartbreak, a glass crashing to the floor.
 
I have this hat with tiny woolen ears,
 it looks like any other hat with tiny woolen ears.
 
But this one connects me to the aural secrets of the universe.  

Wow, what a poem! It plugs my mind immediately, and directly, into the vast expanses of imagination that are open to anyone … if they allow themselves time for wondering, and make the time for exploratory wandering …