Join us to discuss Pig Data by former Poet Laureate Anne Vegter alongside translator Astrid Alben and Sophie Collins.
A ground-breaking work of contemporary Dutch poetry and winner of the the Ida Gerhardt Poetry Prize, Pig Data exposes the raw nerves of power and desire. The collection orchestrates a mythic and historical collision between three formidable figures – the South African poet Ingrid Jonker, the mythical witch Medea, and a provocative poetic ‘I’ (evoking the trope of the ‘scorned woman’) – to interrogate the male gaze and the transformative potential of female rage.
Vegter’s poems tease language to its limit, with a restless energy that is dynamic, vicious and vulgar, infused with humour and absurdist overtones, brought to life through Astrid Alben’s virtuosic translation. Pig Data fearlessly rebuffs the comforts of traditional form, revelling in contradictions, moving between a luminous tenderness and vulgar, incoherent urgency.
Anne Vegter is the author of numerous poetry collections, children’s books, theatre monologues and erotic stories. Her first poetry collection, Het veerde, appeared in 1991, followed in 1994 by Ongekuiste versies, a book of erotic tales. Since then, she has published widely across genres. Her work is characterised by an elastic style that is playful, erotic, enigmatic and disturbing. Vegter regularly works as a performer, collaborating with composers and musicians. She has received numerous awards for children’s literature, theatre and poetry, including the Woutertje Pieterse Prize, the Awater Poetry Prize, the Anna Blaman Prize, and the Ida Gerhardt Poetry Prize. In 2013, she became the first woman to be named Poet Laureate of the Netherlands, a role she held until 2017. Prototype published Astrid Alben’s translation of Vegter’s collection Island mountain glacier in 2022, winner of an English PEN Translates award. Pig Data was awarded the Ida Gerhardt Poetry Prize for best collection.
Astrid Alben is a poet, editor and translator. She is the author of Ai! Ai! Pianissimo, Plainspeak and Little Dead Rabbit, which was self-translated and published as Klein dood konijn by PoëzieCentrum. Her poetry and non-fiction have appeared in journals including Granta and the Times Literary Supplement. She has worked with BBC Radio, the Serpentine Gallery and Wellcome Collection, and with performance and animation.
Sophie Collins is the author of small white monkeys (Book Works, 2017) and Who Is Mary Sue? (Faber & Faber, 2018). She is the editor of an anthology of translations, Currently & Emotion (Test Centre, 2016), and is the translator, from the Dutch, of Lieke Marsman's The Following Scan Will Last Five Minutes (Pavilion Poetry, 2019), a Poetry Book Society Choice, and The Opposite of a Person (Daunt Books, 2021), which was awarded the TA First Translation Prize. Her translation of Marsman's On Another Planet They Can Save Me will be published this year by Daunt in the UK and Catapult Books in the US. Collins' first novel, Private View, will be published by Daunt in 2028.
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