[1] Van der Waal has worked as a journalist, a translator and as a teacher at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie.
In 2012, he won the Ida Gerhardt Poëzieprijs for his poetry collection Zelf worden.
Van der Waal and Erik Lindner wrote the book De kunst van het dichten, a collection of essays and conversations with other poets, including Nachoem Wijnberg, Anneke Brassinga and Anne Vegter.
Van der Waal also published Liefdesgeschiedenissen in 1991, a Dutch translation of the work Histoires d'amour (1983) by Bulgarian-French philosopher Julia Kristeva.
He has also translated works of Maurice Blanchot, Paul Auster and Hans Faverey.