Let’s spare a thought for the beach poets, that ‘handful of geniuses’ who hang out on the sands, ‘making poetry with the waves’. Like the Dominican poet Frank Báez, perhaps, whose poetry does more than merely spread the sunshine of his native island. Frank, according to one critic, on the Poetry International archives, inhabits ‘the universe of the young man who wants to live a grand and buoyant life but cannot get his beloved Caribbean island out of his system. Again and again Báez returns to the quay, the pier, the waves . . ‘
The Beach Poets
Now I will take the opportunity of telling you the legend
of the beach poets.
A handful of geniuses who live on the beaches
making poetry with the waves:
writing odes, sonnets and elegies on the pages of the sea.
Beach poets do not need to go to university,
nor to work, nor belong
to the national federation of surfers.
It is enough for them to have an ear for the ocean.
The beach poets paddle and mount
their boards with a Spartan discipline,
ready to tame the tumult of wild and deafening waves.
When the weather forecast announces a hurricane
they are the first to arrive at the beaches.
Firemen and civil defence gendarmes with megaphones
beg them to leave.
At thirty, like the Romantic poets, they retire.
Some of them die by drowning.
Others are attacked by sharks and lose
their legs or arms.
Others become lawyers.
But believe it or not, their works endure.
And night and day, if you come close enough to the sea you can hear wave after wave reciting them.
(Translated by Richard Gwyn)
Los Beach Poets
Ahora aprovecho para contarles la leyenda
de los beach poets.
Un puñado de genios que viven en las playas
haciendo poesía con las olas:
escribiendo odas, sonetos y elegías en las páginas del mar.
Los beach poets no necesitan ir a la universidad,
ni trabajar, ni pertenecer
a la federación nacional de surfistas.
Les basta con tener oído para el océano.
Los beach poets reman y se suben
en las tablas con disciplina espartana,
dispuestos a domar la manada de salvajes y estruendosas olas.
Cuando meteorología anuncia un huracán
son los primeros que llegan a las playas.
Los bomberos y la defensa civil con megáfonos
les ruegan que salgan.
A los treinta, al igual que los poetas románticos, se retiran.
Algunos mueren ahogados.
Otros son atacados por tiburones y pierden
sus piernas o sus brazos.
Otros se hacen abogados.
Pero créase o no sus obras perduran.
Y noche y día, si uno se acerca lo suficiente al mar
puede escuchar como este ola tras ola las recita.
Frank Báez, born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in 1978, is a poet, editor and writer. He has published four books of poetry, one book of short stories and three books of chronicles. His poetry collection Postales has been published in five countries and was awarded the Salome Ureña National Prize for Poetry in 2009. In 2014 a selection of his poetry was published in English, titled Last Night I Dreamt I was a DJ (Miami: Jai-Alai Books, 2014). His work is included in the anthology El canon abierto: última poesía en español (Madrid: Visor Libros, 2015), brings together many of the most relevant Spanish- language poets born after 1970. Báez also forms part of the multidisciplinary collective El Hombrecito, combining performance in music, literature and visual arts. Two of his poems appear in The Other Tiger: Recent Poetry from Latin America. In 2017 Báez was the only poet included on the Bogotá39 list of the best Latin-American writers under forty.
Frank Báez © Lidybel Martinez
Ricardo Blanco's Blog 
That’s wonderful. I can hear the call of those waves now, can hear their voices. In Sydney, Harry the Hat was in his late 80s and surfed every day. He could hear the mermaids singing.
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