Lucía Estrada, translated by Olivia Lott

Lucía Estrada’s Katabasis, finalist for the PEN Prize for Poetry in Translation and winner of the 2017 Bogotá Poetry Prize, is the first full-length collection of poetry by a Colombian woman to be translated into English. It takes its title from the Greek word for descent, referring to both classical knowledge quests into the underworld by epic heroes and, more broadly, to any journey into madness, darkness, and the unknown. Olivia Lott’s seminal translation tracks the mercurial tempos and intertextualities of the poems, as it captures the double valence of political dissent and katabatic descent. This book reminds us that darkness is a space of enlightenment.

"Lucía Estrada numbers among a group of celebrated Latin American women poets who unrelentingly explore the darkest crannies of the imagination and the intellect, including Marosa DiGiorgio, Reína María Rodríguez, and Blanca Varela. Estrada's poetry, which emerges from Colombia's decades-long armed conflict, is shadowy, subaquatic, yet razor-sharp. Olivia Lott's impressive, sophisticated translations are an event unto themselves." --Rachel Galvin, author of Elevated Threat Level

Sarah Booker's interview with Olivia Lott at Hopscotch

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Poetry, English & Spanish

Publication date: October 15, 2020

ISBN-13: 978–1–732936–35–5

Format: Softcover, 108 pages, 9"x6"