Office Hours Getting to know… Olivia Lott

In a Q&A, Olivia Lott discusses what drew her to study Latin American literature, her efforts to translate little-known works, and why she chose to do this work at Yale. 

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Olivia Lott

Olivia Lott
Getting to know… Olivia Lott
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The U.S. publishes fewer works of literature in translation than any other nation, Olivia Lott says. Lott, an award-winning translator of Latin American poetry, is doing her own small part to change that. 

“I’m an advocate of poetry in translation as a way to draw attention to the fact that there are other literatures out there written in languages other than English,” Lott says. “And so we don’t have just one text from a country and that text becomes the representation of that whole nation.” 

In the latest edition of Office Hours, a Q&A series that introduces new Yale faculty members to the broader community, Lott discusses her mission to translate little-known works, how she became fluent in Spanish, and why she’s excited to be at Yale. 

TitleAssistant professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Research InterestLatin American poetry and poetics, avant-gardes, and translation
Prior InstitutionPrinceton University
Started at YaleJuly 1, 2024

How did you become interested in Latin American poetry? 

Olivia Lott: I went to Kenyon College in Ohio and started taking literature courses, and I found myself most drawn to poetry courses and the poetry material that we read in the surveys. That really kickstarted my interest. And then after college, I did a Fulbright grant in Colombia, where I worked with young poets, and I started translating poetry into English. That solidified it, and I’ve been focusing on poetry and poetics ever since. 

Were you fluent in Spanish when you arrived at Kenyon?

Lott: Not really. I had a few years of high school Spanish. The major moments when I really improved my Spanish were when I spent a year abroad in Mexico during college, and then the year in Colombia.

You do a lot of translation work and have worked on several book-length projects. How do you choose which works to focus on? 

Lott: I exclusively choose projects that I think wouldn’t otherwise get translated, and that are underrepresented in the English language or U.S. publishing. The first book-length project I translated is by an Afro-Cuban poet. In general, Black writers are far less likely to be translated into English than white writers. I worked on a translation of a book by Lucia Estrada that ended up being the first full-length English language translation of a woman poet from Colombia, which is a really staggering fact. 

More recently, I’ve been working on these poems from the 1960s by a Venezuelan poet that I wrote about in my dissertation. That one is more of an archival investigation of finding work that’s not gotten much attention and trying to bring it to light. 

What’s your current book project?

Lott: It’s about experimental poetics in what is known as the “long” 1960s in Latin America. That is the period of time between the 1959 coming-into-power of the Cuban Revolution and the 1973 U.S.-backed coup d’état in Chile. I’m looking at how experimental poetry circles — whether poetry magazines, collectives, or groups — were involved in the anti-imperialist struggles of the long decade. And I’m reading their work through the lens of translation. 

What drew you to Yale?

Lott: It’s exciting to join a department that’s growing and wants to do things in an innovative way. There’s a lot of interest in thinking across regions, which is something that is at the center of my work. I found myself at home in this department and how they are imagining how we will continue to innovate moving forward. 

What do you like to do outside of work? 

Lott: We have two rescue dogs — one of them was a street dog in Ecuador and the other one we just rescued last spring from a shelter in Oklahoma. So my wife and I spend a lot of time with the dogs. We also like to do CrossFit and Olympic weightlifting. We try and be pretty active when we’re not sitting at a computer.