Kata Basis
Kata Basis
Katabasis
Eulalia Books
300 Fraser Purchase Road
Latrobe, PA 15650
ISBN: 978-1-7329363-5-5
3
Katabasis
Lucía Est
rada
Translated
by
Olivia Lott
Surfaces
Medusas 22
Medusas 23
Abejas 24
Bees 25
Duermevela 26
Halfasleep 27
Cotidiana 28
Quotidian 29
Mare Nostrum 30
Mare Nostrum 31
Regreso a Ítaca 32
Return to Ithaca 33
Nota encontrada al margen
de un poema de Anna Ajmátova 34
Note Found in the Margin
of a Poem by Anna Akhmatova 35
Tiempos modernos 36
Modern Times 37
Visitación 38
Visitation 39
Imprecación 40
Imprecation 41
Ofrenda 42
Offering 43
Alfabeto del tiempo 44
Lettered Days 45
Negación de las superficies 46
Denial of Surfaces 47
Subsoil
7
De luna y tenebrario 74
Of Moon and Tenebrae Candle 75
A una sombra 76
Shaded 77
Final Descent
Peldaño I 80
Stair I 81
Peldaño II 84
Stair II 85
Peldaño III 88
Stair III 89
Peldaño IV 92
Stair IV 93
Peldaño V 94
Stair V 95
Peldaño VI 98
Stair VI 99
Peldaño VII 100
Stair VII 101
Último peldaño 102
Last Stair 103
Notes 105
Surfaces
Subsoil
10
intensified by the neo-imperialist policies of the United States
under the guise of the so-called “war on drugs,” the Conflict
is still not “over.” What does over-not-over look and feel like after
a half-century of war? What does it mean for the personal
and interpersonal? And what about the intrapersonal, the
relationship between the conscious actor and the subconscious
being? Within this uncertainty, what is the effect of bypassing
the local in favor of elsewhere? How can art embody this
trauma and voice its non-materiality? These are some of the
questions to which today’s poets from Colombia respond and
which take on increasingly heterogenous expressions in their
writing. And these are some of the questions that, it seems
to me, give shape to the descent of Katabasis, its purposeful
sinking, its uncontrollable toppling, and its coming up for air.
11
what kind of cultural production circulates and is translated
into English and what doesn’t and isn’t.
12
dismantling of the imperialist vision of Latin America and to
express my allyship with this struggle. To be sure, as Walter
Benjamin theorized and Harry Zohn rendered into English,
literary translation is a mode: an action carried out in a
particular way that reverberates in reactions, which, in
turn, have the potential to generate change, to shift, disrupt,
undercut, make anew. Today, poet and translator Don Mee
Choi asserts that it is not enough to understand translation
as a mode. Rather, the politically conscious translator must
cultivate their art as an explicitly “anti-neocolonial mode,”
one invested in precisely these reactions and their nature. In
this there can be no ambiguity. At its core, I view Estrada’s
Katabasis as challenging a U.S.-fabricated vision of Colombia
and what is “Colombian” in its reluctance to perform an easily
consumable image of these containers. I am drawn to this
collection because it compels us to look beneath the surface, to
read more deeply, to question what we think we know—about
ourselves and others.
Final Descent
13
then, is content and form. Derived from the ancient Greek, the
word first emerged in the classical tradition to signify knowledge
quests of epic heroes who descend into the underworld and
undergo spiritual and intellectual enlightenment; The Odyssey,
The Aeneid, and the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice offer the
most iconic examples. Estrada’s katabatic poetics amalgamate
other literary models of descent and, with it, dissent—the
surrealist exploration of the subconscious, confessional poetry’s
attention to the inner life, psychoanalysis, as well as techniques
of defamiliarization, ekphrasis, heightened intertextuality, and
relentless enjambment—while never losing sight of the journey
to evolution, to insight, which must first pass through the dark.
14
cosmic or disturb or make strange, but in a purposeful and
personal probing for new frames of reference, new awareness.
Surrealism does not replace the autobiographical, narrativity
does not supplant lyricism, the foreign does not overpower the
local, a poetry of the mind does not rule out of poetry of the
body. Estrada’s katabasis descends into darkness and madness,
but also towards clarity and room to breathe.
15
sal” as “red-hot salt” rather than the more literal “burning
salt.” Indeed, the more I read the more Plath’s Ariel echoed in
Estrada’s lyric. In the cited epigraph, for instance, Plath depicts
an “air stir,” not a “stir in the air.” These stranger, clipped
nouns, which are not as syntactically feasible in Spanish, felt
at home to me as I built the English. Estrada’s “sílaba de aire,”
“vueltas de llave,” and “dolor de sal” became “air syllable,”
“key turns,” and “salt ache” in my rendering.
16
you? / Are you––Nobody––too?” Dickinson explicitly appears
nowhere in Katabasis, but in these moments I am conscious of
her presence and I grant myself this creative license. No art
exists in isolation from others; no text is entirely “original” but,
rather, a constant recycling of poetries, images, and thoughts
we read and digest. The literary translator––like the original
author, like the reader––dives deeper into her poetry by way of
personal renderings, experiences, and influences. It is through
layers of translation that poetic voices come into being.
17
for a moment. Your eyes have gotten used to the shadow.”
Like Estrada’s Spanish, my English moves between these two
rhythms. We don’t allow the reader to become too comfortable.
We want them to know that something is at stake here. Our
speaker utters, “Listen, something in this scream is for you.”
Olivia Lott
St. Louis, Missouri & Minneapolis, Minnesota
June 2020
19
Flick the glass with your fingernail:
It will ping like a Chinese chime in the slightest air stir
Though nobody in there looks up or bothers to answer.
Sylvia Plath
21
If once more you were my pain, faithful to you,
and a lip came by, this side, at the
place, where I reach out of myself.
Paul Celan
faces
22
Medusas
Deja que la corriente diluya entre nosotros este tiempo sin orillas.
23
Medusas
You drift in a baffled sea. Your eyes cast aside ancient clarities,
from when a tree was a tree, and the red-hot salt, a reason to
move through the world.
You let the swell cradle you, like remnants of a boat. You feel
sorry for yourself, for what you left on the shore.
You are breathing beyond you, beyond us. You drag out our
path. I’m right behind you but I don’t know it, I sense how the
days come apart, how mistakes pick up altitude then plunge,
detached, into nothingness.
Let the current water down this shoreless time between us.
24
Abejas
25
Bees
Its bees boil on the inside. Nobody has put them there. This
unsettling gift doesn’t come from anyone else, I’m sure of it.
Closer than my bones, its buzz rises until clouding the noise of
daily clashes.
I inch closer, I dare to, just a little more, to get a sense of how
ravenous they are.
26
Duermevela
27
Halfasleep
Pounds, and then the dream slips, gets lost under ice. Whoever
lies in wait for the glass knows the signs of being alive against
the current. Whoever lies in wait in the middle of the night
knows a piece of our shadow stands by with eyes wide open.
Whoever lies in wait, knows it all…
28
Cotidiana
29
Quotidian
30
Mare Nostrum
Swayed by memory, their eyelids shut out night. It’s all sun and
biting silence, barely a whisper of what life was.
32
Regreso a Ítaca
33
Return to Ithaca
You know another day will come, another night, time standing
still in each line of your hand. Over there are words in single-
file, useless, clouded in their state of mist.
34
Nota encontrada al margen de un
poema de Anna Ajmátova
35
Note Found in the Margin of a Poem
by Anna Akhmatova
36
Tiempos modernos
37
Modern Times
Right now is right now, no yesterday, no tomorrow, they rush to say it,
restless, ready. They serve the world at their table, and officiate
small ceremonies where they stay in one piece so not to be
bothered. To think of nothing. To be nothing. Much less to
feel. Stay clear, life always runs in the opposite direction.
38
Visitación
39
Visitation
I watch her from my window. She takes a step, stops, and turns
her gaze on me. Who could forget that face?
40
Imprecación
41
Imprecation
The stars above stay their course, unmoved. They’ll say nothing
this time. They’ve laid out traps for you instead of ears.
42
Ofrenda
43
Offering
Your body fights for a moment. Your eyes have gotten used to
the shadow. A rope around your neck, its glowing weight on
your back. Then it’s not worth it, to put up your truth against
a violence that sinks you effortlessly, finishes you off at the gates
of you. You’re shaking.
You give in. Day will slice up your body. After all, you’re part
of the offering.
44
Alfabeto del tiempo
A Eugenio Montejo
45
Lettered Days
To Eugenio Montejo
46
Negación de las superficies
47
Denial of Surfaces
Alone, in the dim vibration of the dream, our bodies grow until
uttering a body, and it is enough.
The world glows outside, but each line closes in on us. You
know it. This time is our time. A moment will come when
someone picks up on us, right as she looks away, so you can
linger on a less ordinary fold, substance shining when you call
it by a new name.
We’re not used to it, but stand firm, look in this sidestepped
earth, even if you don’t come across it, dig with your hands
until gripping the root, until taking a bite. Maybe you’ll take
back an ancient kingdom in your mouth, the one you’ll sound
out with fear even if nobody understands, even if nobody asks
questions, even if, in the end, however much you wrestled away
circles back to us like day one.
49
Here’s my hand. It’s not plaster, even though it’s
coated in dust and mortar. I know it can bleed.
Lasse Söderberg
soil
50
Memoria de humo y ceniza
Aún es posible ver arder las estrellas. Pero nada nos hablará al
oído.
51
Profile of Smoke and Ash
I ask about what was here before us, about the shards of lifeless
words nobody sounded out, nobody ever heard. Scraps of
timeless language, razor-sharp writing, glossy like scales on the
final fish; stones and trees and bones still steaming from the
blows of a blood-splattered noon.
We can still see the stars burn. But nothing will whisper in our
ears.
52
Memoria de polvo y hueso
53
Profile of Dust and Bone
The same shadows cast by the moon over Alice’s rabbit hole.
Bodies breaking away from bad omens.
For a while now the sea ripples in my ear, wipes out bridges I
built in my dreams; salt bites at the root of my tongue, house
roof, garden clovers, corners where the hare slips away.
There’s a way out, but we have to dig until our fingers touch
down, work our hands to the bone until we find the lock. Dig
until we’re back at the beginning, until we can’t recall anything,
until we’re just bone, rock, a piece of what once was, and now
means nothing…
54
Trazos
Hay una línea, entre todas las que elegiste, en la que empiezo
a desaparecer. Y como el viento que mueve sin descanso las
ramas de los árboles, vuelvo del fin a mi nacimiento. Basta
un solo gesto de tu mano en el vacío para poner en marcha
esta nueva perplejidad de horas, de minutos, de sombras que
se consumen… Camino alrededor de mí. Ningún límite se
interpone, pero bien sé que cada paso lo guarda el invierno. Si
enciendo una llama es para no perderme; si ante la luz cierro
los ojos es para que viva en secreto tras los párpados. Cada
cosa que haya existido, volverá a abrirse paso entre la hierba.
Pero no sin riesgo. Aquí y allá todo cruje. El corazón siempre
estará a la altura de su muerte. Cruzará para ella el aire, el
agua, la herrumbre… La tinta negra de un mar negro va de
tus manos a mis manos, aprieta el anzuelo, escupe palabras
incomprensibles.
55
Outlines
There’s a line, in all the ones you’ve set aside, where I begin
to fade away. And like the wind that endlessly sways branches,
I come back from the end to my birth. A single wave from
your hand in the emptiness is enough to set in motion this new
daze of hours, minutes, shadows eaten away… I circle myself.
No limit stands in the way, but every inch of me knows winter
keeps each step in view. If I light a flame, it’s so I don’t lose
track of myself; if I close my eyes in the light, it’s so I exist
secretly behind eyelids. Every thing that has been will come
back to push its way through grass. It’s not risk-free. Here and
there, every thing creaks. Heart will always be at the peak of
its dying. For its dying, air, water, rust will cross to the other
side… Black ink from a black sea flows from your hands to
mine, squeezes the bait, spews jumbled words.
But here’s where I start to fade away. Dark line keeps to its
course. Three key turns, and the body will feel its phantoms, its
thick blood, the absurd shape of its interior…
Stone, sand, abyss. Silence that trails the crash, war cry,
tempest; it mixes up with mine, white, shaky. But who says I
take place in the world? Who says this day is just a day and
doesn’t belong to me?
56
Del tiempo de este reino
Más solitarias que tus pasos, las hojas de hierba crecen hacia
la nube de polvo. Más desvaídas que tus gestos, las piedras
rehacen una y otra vez el camino.
57
From the Moment of This Reign
There will always be walls behind other walls, and beyond that,
other walls scaling their peaks. Fake stories, too, and lessons,
dark omens, signs; the ones that cut short your deep-rooted
tendency to flee before the pack of dogs catches up to you. But
right there, in this dry, tightfisted labyrinth, you’ll witness the
lonely crossing of what could be a shared rite of passage.
Lonelier than your steps, leaves of grass sprout toward the dust
cloud. More faded than your body language, stones put the
path back together over and over.
58
Del laberinto de Ariadna I
59
From Ariadne’s Labyrinth I
Keep at the gash that will prick up your ear, sharpen your
tongue. Keep at it until you’re the wound’s fence of edged
words.
From one end of blood to the other, where the faded moon
feeds its dogs, dangles its thirsty line. But don’t break it in two.
Don’t break open night or the word mirror. Don’t break what
you’ve heard or the will to stay put on crumbling ice, under the
burning heat of countless clashing lights.
60
Del laberinto de Ariadna II
61
From Ariadne’s Labyrinth II
And still, the rope that wrapped up your shadow, that image
you had of the world, dark, dense like an oil stain, lingers
somewhere, waiting for the breaking point, for fibers to tear,
for the little or nothing we’ve done, it rushes its glassful of half-
truths so not to give in. The time is just right to climb up to it
once more, tightening our bodies to a tension still plummeting
even as it goes up, then falling apart at the peak, delicate like
sugar crystals, no noise, nobody catching on.
62
Del laberinto de Ariadna III
63
From Ariadne’s Labyrinth III
The rope splits in two at its weakest point. Tension that suffices
and exhausts itself. Tension from the tiniest fiber, where
shadows dance, scream, pound, the ones we take in, the ones
we stumble over.
64
Mar de Barents
65
Barents Sea
We’ve made it to this point. The least possible, but most true.
A mountain that we scaled the wrong way, patiently, beginning
at our best days. We went all out, northless, as if somebody
else guided our fate. In the end, an evil, unbending hand. Now
we see it. You can spot its perfect outline on this marginless
page, this hollow plunge that tightens throats, blocks light. But
there’s still something left of us. A bit of saved up air, an image,
a word tough as stone. A word slicing metal or being used as
an anchor. A word locking everything up, turning everything
loose.
66
Heredad
67
Assets
From one end of the house to the other, our steps claim their
habit of falling behind the impossible. Each of us sets our own
rules, auscultates the walls, the bedroom shadows, the hum of
water that dampens stones, points out a secret path to regions
submerged in memory.
From one end of blood to the other, time founds its brotherhood.
Many moons will pass before death can dwindle it away.
68
Aniversario
69
Anniversary
Time isn’t swallowing us. It’s just that things acquire another
shine, a mossy and shadowy stillness, which pulls them away
from us for good.
But the tree you scribbled as a kid stays in one piece. Somewhere,
your eyes refuse dust, step away from the moment set to flames,
wait for another sky to return their glance. Maybe you’ll make
more sense of this tough turnaround. Blood and its timeworn
stories follow the course of what trembles in air and won’t die.
A bird tumbled in dry wind until losing the horizon, the house
vanished behind the garden, each face was reflected in all its
puzzlement.
Days passed, we don’t know where they went, but at some point
they’ll be brought to a stop. They’ll ask about you, us, and these
words that inch you closer to me, tiny bones darkened in the
palm of my hand, they’re a reply falling short.
70
Herencia
71
Birthright
Now is when, father, but not for me. Not for the life that went
on forming pools over there where nobody goes, where any ray
of light comes to ache. You were fixed on night, only at night
could fear wrap you up so fully and be, at last, your faithful
guide. It didn’t matter if it laid down sentences, didn’t matter if
it erased numbers, faces, that thing you once believed in.
72
Este es el tiempo en que ya no puedo tocarte, en el que tu
imagen más próxima es un golpe de dados que pierde para
siempre nuestras cabezas.
73
Now is when I shouldn’t be able to touch you, when your
nearest profile should be a roll of the dice that loses our heads
for good.
74
De luna y tenebrario
A mi madre
Marosa Di Giorgio
75
Of Moon and Tenebrae Candle
To my mother
Marosa Di Giorgio
76
A una sombra
77
Shaded
Somebody screams out their names, but we’re the ones being
called.
79
Maybe another side exists
and it’s the look, too,
and all this is that
and the other
and we are a shape changing with the light
until being just light, just shadow.
Blanca Varela
Descent
80
Peldaño I
Has vuelto a casa. Paredes por todos lados, y una que otra
escalera para empezar a morir. Miras tu cuerpo. Arde sin
ventanas. Sin embargo, se está bien aquí. Los objetos muestran
su condescendencia. Tienes miedo. Poco a poco, el aire
cerrado irá tomando posesión de los minutos, de las horas, del
tiempo que se mueve a tu alrededor en danza macabra. Te
acostumbrarás. Pronto serás la misma.
81
Stair I
You’ve come home. Walls all around, and some other staircase
to start dying. You stare at your body. Burning, windowless.
Still, all is well here. Objects show their smugness. You’re afraid.
Little by little, sealed air will begin seizing minutes, hours, time
in motion around you, swaying to the dance of death. You’ll
get used to it. You’ll soon be the same.
You put up a fight, but this will only last a second. After all,
there’s not much to see past the ivy.
You’ll be okay relearning the name of the ruin. Your hands will
be apprentices of a new form of forgetting. Nothing, nobody
will be able to throw this favor in your face. Here every shadow
has its task and carries it out just right.
82
Afuera, quizás, hablarán de ti. Sospecharán que te has
convertido en niebla. No hagas caso. Te espiarán por las
hendijas, pero para ellos será un espectáculo vacío.
83
Outside, maybe they’ll talk about you. Suspect you’ve turned
into mist. Pay them no mind. They’ll spy on you through the
cracks, but it will be nothing more than an empty show.
You’ve come back to your chair, your table. Your lamp will
speak for you again. Dust, who are you anyway? Dust creeps
by, sweetly bites at your lungs. Or else it’s ash, or the mirror you
last passed. You haven’t changed one bit!
84
Peldaño II
Para Paula
85
Stair II
For Paula
Are you seeing how death ripples in this landscape? Are you
hearing how it sings, sibylline, among the stones?
86
Resistir, aunque el cuerpo esté lleno de grietas, aunque la
ruina haya alcanzado tu respiración. Voces ahogadas, soles
resplandeciendo detrás de la noche.
87
To put up a fight, even if your body is full of cracks, even if ruin
has reached your breathing. Drowned voices, suns gleaming
behind night.
To put up a fight because the sea is there and so are two or three
things that sustain its pulse. They ask nobody about it. Some
look steady, make up new ways to run off and safeguard the
little beauty we’ve come by. You say, so everything is just right,
like never before. You jump. It’s the voices. Just the voices, little
hints of death you want to mind.
Now, facing the sea, our hands are empty. We’re motionless,
not wanting to put up a fight, we hold scraps of words, silences
that won’t account for our steps. It’s all been sent back again.
Almost nothing, in this game of chance and promises, ended
up with a name, reasoning on its side. Almost nothing, not even
taking a risk, where there was nothing to see…
88
Peldaño III
89
Stair III
Below the roof held by no sky, life plays out in another way. An
underground river with sultry shapes, a river that can barely
be made out in the penumbra. What shines inside, lime, sand,
soft curves that take in, like a belly, sleep, mysteries of flesh, it
feeds the raging midday of balconies; sparkling sea coming and
going right below, steady see-through rainfall outside. Inside,
measurements will go on until the end, long delays between
numbers and little clever gods.
90
ni pequeño, abriéndose a la noche, sucediendo sin testigos,
sucediendo—sencillamente—como la luz, o el peldaño que no
continúa la escalera, y que muere, perfecto y distante, ante tus
ojos que se apagan.
91
the stair not drawing out the staircase, dying, perfect, cold, in
front of your eyes as they get switched off.
92
Peldaño IV
Son tantos los lugares a los que podría dirigirme. Tantos y tan
inciertos. La certeza es una raíz profunda bajo los pies. Amarra
lo inimaginable. Tiembla a veces, pero subsiste a pesar de la
ausencia de agua, a pesar de la inexistencia del sol.
93
Stair IV
How to make out stars among endless lights in the glassy sky.
How to be sure. How to call them by their true name. How, if
I had to change my dark accent for the journey, if I did what
I was told, forgot the words in my mother’s voice circling my
delirium.
94
Peldaño V
95
Stair V
P.A.E.Z.
Then and now, the scream… Then: when life was making its
way into your brain, branching out, becoming darker, denser,
almost an oily stream of images—stones, red-hot knives, all on
the brink, all of a sudden carried out. Now: as you’re trying
to decode what has just fallen on your head, shapes, blows,
jumbled languages, the howl of those who can’t handle fear
and throw themselves at the wolf ’s mouth before looking him
in the eye. Now: as your thoughts “abandon you at every level.”
Nobody was as close to herself as this thirsty animal waiting for
you on every turned page, in every word set to flames, ember
in the thick of palate and teeth, unbearable, loyal… “scraps
which I was able to rescue from utter nothingness…”. Silence of matter
shining, splashing with your blood. What others set aside, what
others didn’t call by its name; what they hid right next to the
sewing machine, and umbrella and dissecting table. “Death is
complete only for those who surrender to it,” for those who build it
from minor slurs, convenient lies told to ears, ill will, false gods
made of gold, clay. There’s nothing to argue, not then not now,
when even eyes were scorching salt, splinters, someone else’s
eye, when others laughed facing ecce homo, and that wild grin,
white, aseptic, was shielded among liquor and hellish recipes,
when not even the doubled star or the lightning bolt could
shutter the cry that you were everything. So, it’s about you and
96
Entonces se trata de ti y de mí, de tu pensamiento bajando a
tropezones por los peldaños que son el mundo, de tus palabras,
boca de lobo, tragándose a sí mismas, regurgitándose,
haciéndose improbables, inaceptables, sucias…
97
me, and your thoughts stumbling down the stairs that are the
world, your words, wolf ’s mouth, swallowing whole, spitting
themselves back up, becoming far-fetched, out of line, filthy…
The little celestial poet who isn’t you, the one hanging by a
thread, the one bursting. Night has made off with the day’s
scraps. Night all calm, soft, silent cry, night and your angels
rising from the earth…
You make up your mind, listen to the tree quiver. Then and
now: the scream. The little poet in the wolf ’s house. Maybe
he’ll eat “the night’s dark heart,” and fall three times, ecce homo,
stair by stair, then and now, now and later “making the same
sound, the same sound, the same sound of night and tree in the
middle of wind….”
98
Peldaño VI
99
Stair VI
And once more the sun brings the wound in view, absence in the
thick of a shining target that overwhelms the eyes. Orphaned
many times over, he’d find his footing plenty of other times,
crossing the storm like a nervous bird, like the hand of a god,
like silence where all things fit.
Hungry wolves lurk behind their soft faces. There, where love
raised a temple, they sharpen their fangs. Even the nearest
color bites the hand feeding it.
Still, once again it’s the sun. Black, repentant stains. Strokes that
whisper something in your ear, maybe a prayer, a procession of
voices growing distant, taking you away…
100
Peldaño VII
Era necesario estar aquí: una ventana abierta y más allá el sol,
su ojo dorado derramándose en la tarde. El tiempo nos vuelve la
espalda. Palabras que alguien soñó perdiéndose para siempre.
Era necesario estar aquí. Las cuerdas del amor anudadas a una
rama invisible, el silencio reconstruyéndose para hacer más
profundo el eco de la casa, los pasos que se alejan, el miedo, la
respiración de lo que nos abandona y nos niega una vez más.
101
Stair VII
102
Último peldaño
103
Last Stair
I write with the last light at my side. Still, it’s not easy. Its uneven
hum scales walls, makes the moon and mirrors dwindle away.
I’ve always been afraid of doubled night, its shadowed sea. The
pulse tightening its throat. Fighting against it, I ride on top of
my head, then tumble wildly, over there where only exhausted
arms live, mouth covered in salt, cruel oblivion of all languages,
where words have no place. I write to give a shape to my death,
but also to birds crossing the sky in slow migrations.
108
A deep, deep thank you to Michelle Gil-Montero and Román
Antopolsky for their impassioned belief in this book, their
creative and editorial labor, and their commitment to the
activist work of poetry in translation. I am appreciative,
too, of the essential input of the larger Eulalia Books team:
Bridget Fertal, Julia Snyder, Irina Rusanova, and Mallory
Truckenmiller. Michelle’s and Mallory’s thorough and
incredibly perceptive readings of this manuscript improved the
translations immensely. I am so proud to collaborate with this
press.
109
Lucía Estrada (Medellín, Colombia, 1980) is the author
of ten books of poetry including the award-winning
collections Las Hijas del Espino (2006) and La noche en el espejo
(2010). She is the two-time recipient of the Bogotá Poetry
Prize, most recently in 2017 for Katábasis, which was
also named a finalist for the 2019 Colombian National
Poetry Prize. Estrada has been invited to participate in
many international literary events and, for several years,
she helped to organize the groundbreaking Medellín
International Poetry Festival. Her work has appeared
in numerous anthologies in and beyond Latin America
and has been partially translated into English, French,
German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and
Swedish. Estrada is currently the Cultural Coordinator at
the Corporación Otraparte in Medellín.