Pig Data

A ground-breaking work of contemporary Dutch poetry, Anne Vegter’s Pig Data exposes the raw nerves of power and desire. 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. 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.