a corpse is also a garden
Pieter Madibuseng Odendaal

August 2025
100pp
200mm x 130mm, with 80mm flaps
ISBN: 978-1-0370-5173-9

my ancestors surround me
in each breath I take
in the wild grass the summers
and the aurora lights
in the heavens of my brain

Pieter Madibuseng Odendaal is one of the leading young Afrikaans poets of his generation. In this, a self-translated selection of poems from his first two collections, readers in English get to experience Odendaal's stunningly confident and self-deconstructing work for the first time.

Odendaal's understated, precise style exhibits a maturity beyond his years – whether he is reckoning with the hideous deeds of his ancestors, the tribulations of young love, or the various everyday beauties and horrors of modern South Africa.

These are poems that affirm our deepest and most profound connections, both with each other and our environments – the places that birth us, and the earth to which we all return.

Pieter Madibuseng Odendaal is a writer, translator, musician and educator.

His debut poetry collection in Afrikaans, asof geen berge ooit hier gewoon het nie, won the 2019 Ingrid Jonker Prize; his second collection, Ontaard, received the 2024 Eugène Marais Prize and the NIHSS Award for Poetry, while his play Droomwerk was nominated for the Hertzog Prize for Drama.

In 2024, Odendaal was named one of the Mail & Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans. His spoken word album, also titled Ontaard, was released in 2025.

This is his first book in English.