Frank Báez

Báez’ work of course also appears in print: he has published four poetry collections so far, among them the award-winning Postales, plus short-story collections, and works of journalism and travel writing – because the young islander who wanted to see the world has since done so. His work has now been translated in more than eight languages and he is a welcome guest at poetry festivals the world over. And these travels show up in his poems too: Chicago, Egypt, the Mediterranean – one by one these locations are folded into 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:

We both have aged, but
despite the passage of time
I keep coming to this reef

to talk to you with the
same innocence as when
I was a kid and walking around

your beaches I picked up a conch
and I put it against my ear and you
you spoke to me for the first time.

This sense of returning over and over is a common theme in Caribbean poetry, and perhaps especially for a poet whose favorite poem is “The Light of the World”, in which Derek Walcott so brilliantly evokes this place. It is only a matter of time before Báez will also write a classic like that. He has already got the parlando Caribbean rhythm down pat, and leaving the island is no longer a prerequisite for fame – that was confirmed in 2017, when Báez was the only poet included on the Bogotá39 list of the best Latin-American writers under forty.