Asta Olivia Nordenhof
(Denmark, 1988) is an award-winning poet and author. In 2020 she published Money to Burn, which was awarded the European Union Prize for Literature. Revolving around the Scandinavian Star disaster in 1990 and tracing how capitalism infects ordinary lives, Money to Burn and The Devil Book caused an international literary sensation and are the first two instalments in a planned septology. They were published in their original Danish language versions in 2020 and 2023; the English versions in 2024 and 2025 respectively. In Money to Burn, Nordenhof tells the story of Maggie and Kurt's marriage through different layers of love, betrayal, and poverty. At the novel's midpoint, Nordenhof leaves the couple behind for an examination of what really happened. A national tragedy in both Norway and Denmark, it was later revealed to be an insurance scam.
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Speech, Silence
In Speech, Silence, six poets respond to the question: what is poetry's relation to silence? Their poetry readings will include new work, written especially for this purpose. You will see and hear Palestinian-American poet George Abraham, Danish writer and poet Asta Olivia Nordenhof, South African writer and poet Rešoketšwe Manenzhe and, from the Netherlands, poets Pelumi Adejumo, Yasmin Namavar and Maureen Ghazal.
This programme takes it's title from the poem Sprekers, zwijgers by the Dutch writer Lidy van Marissing, published in her latest collection De verwerping van het stilzitten (The rejection of inaction, 2024). Van Marissing's poem speaks of a "language half speaking, half silent, rocking back / and forth in between."
Palestinian-American poet Fady Joudah commented on speaking and silence in a recent interview with The New Inquiry: "We need to learn how to listen in silence to the Palestinian in their silence. So far, when a Palestinian goes silent, it means they are dead or violable, digestible, liable for further erasure or dispossession. English has not begun imagining the Palestinian speaking, let alone understanding Palestinian silence."
Fady Joudah's words make us rethink poetry and silence. Poetry, and our discourse about poetry, always run the risk of degenerating into a domestication of silence, a way of making silence available and digestible to an audience, often in a language that is also used to commit the atrocities producing so many forms of silence.
The poets recite their new work written especially for Speech, Silence in their preferred language of writing. The poems will be simultaneously projected in Dutch and/or English.
Speech, Silence has been curated for Writers Unlimited Festival 2025 by Maarten van der Graaff.
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Money to Burn
The trigger for this conversation about the destructive power of greed and capitalism is Danish author Asta Olivia Nordenhof's magnificent novel Money to Burn (Dutch title: Geld als water). English spoken.
Money to Burn is the first part of a novel project as impressive as it is daring, the kick-off of a seven-part series, the second part of which, The Devil's Book, will be published in January 2025. Each volume will be linked to the for-profit fire on the cruise ship the Scandinavian Star in 1990, in which 159 people lost their lives.
Dario Goldbach, in his debut novel De man die alles had (The Man Who Had Everything, 2023), takes readers on a world tour of the excesses of capitalism. And writer and theatre-maker Marjolijn van Heemstra describes how the human urge to colonise is no longer limited to other countries, but also extends to other planets.
Moderator Roos van Rijswijk will lead the discussion and use the authors' books to explore this topic in more depth. Does capitalism have a future or is the moment of the bubble bursting near?
Money to Burn is curated for Writers Unlimited Festival 2025 by Ilonka Reintjens.
