the easiness and the loneliness

October 23, 2018
poems | pb | 96 pgs.
5.5" x 8.5" 
978-1-940953-85-4

Winner of the 2013 Montanas Literature Prize

One of the best-selling poetry collections of the past decade, Asta Olivia Nordenhof’s the easiness and the loneliness took Denmark by storm with its refreshing honesty and directness about growing up in a challenging family situation. Nordenhof eschews traditional ideas of poetic beauty in favor of poems that double as social critiques, addressing the inequalities in Denmark, the difficulties of living under great financial strain, various forms of abuse, and working in a brothel.

Translated from the Danish by Susanna Nied

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About the Author:

Asta Olivia Nordenhof made her debut in 2011 with the novel Et ansigt til Emily (A Face for Emily), which won the Bodil and Jørgen Munch-Christensen Debutant Prize. She is a graduate of the School of Authors in Copenhagen, and won the 2013 Montanas Literature Prize for her poetry collection, the easiness and the loneliness. She has worked as a prostitute, and runs a blog that combines diary entries, poems, excerpts of critical theory texts, and observations on everything from feminism to red wine.

About the Translators: 

Susanna Nied is a writer and translator who received the Landon Translation Award of the Academy of American Poets in 2007 for her translation of it by Inger Christensen. She has twice been a finalist for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.

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“Asta Olivia Nordenhof’s evocative, memory-based poems from her acclaimed debut combine the narrators daily life in Copenhagen with memories of a difficult childhood marred by illness, death, grief, and violence. Personal experiences alternate with fragmentary aphorisms suggesting new directions, not least with regards to memory.”
—Åsa Arping, History of Nordic Women’s Literature

“It is a hard, difficult life that Nordenhof has put in front of us in this book, and it is very compelling to read—and written in a very straightforward style. . . . There is every reason to follow Nordenhof with keen interest in the future, there is so much promise, such great originality in her universe.”
—Torben Wendelboe, Litteratursiden