MISO

maga zine.

village/coconut/tap/sunflower/burning damage/animal/scare/ecological/cake/ beer/cherry/ribcage/fuss/crow/pyjama crickets/balloon/peace/fjord/birdcage

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CONVERSATION ______ Rachael Allen .............................................. 03

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TRAVEL ______ Oslo, Norway ................................................................ 07

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NEW WRITING ______ Poetry and prose ............................................ 11

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VOCABULARY ______ Danish .............................................................. 17

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MISO _ MAGAZINE autumn winter _ 2016

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Caroline Jones

SUB EDITOR PUBLISHER

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EDITOR

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CONTRIBUTORS

Richard Parkin MISO, Chester |

Rachael Allen, Libby Meredith, Dan Ryder, Sam Buchan-Watts

Copyright © is reserved to the respective authors.

01.

CONVERSATION Rachael Allen [2]

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RACHAEL CO-EDITS ANTHOLOGY SERIES CLINIC AND ONLINE JOURNAL TENDER. SHE IS POETRY EDITOR FOR GRANTA.

Where did you grow up? I grew up in Cornwall in a small village. Where did you study? When did you first start writing poetry? I studied English Literature at Goldsmiths after some unhappy years at a big unruly comprehensive. I started writing poems when I was fifteen and feeling bored and uninspired. I bought the Bloodaxe Book of Modern Women Poets and I was obsessed with it, would carry it around with me and write bad Sharon Olds rip-offs. I mean I’m still doing that, but that’s when I first started.

see / a burning child on the stove” – tell us more about this line. ‘Prawns of Joe’ was inspired by a poem from the Bloodaxe book I mentioned before, a poem called PRAWNS DE JO by Selima Hill. It’s an incredible poem, all singing curtains and orange smells. It was actually this poem that inspired that line, as there’s talk around the idea of a burning baby, but it’s hinted at in a far more subtle way. When I first read it I couldn’t believe that something could be written like that and be

Talk me through your poem ‘Prawns of Joe’. The most striking image in the poem (for MISO) is “In amongst all the crying, I [4]

considered a poem, and I do this quite a lot with books or poems that I really love, I read and reread the poem over and over again (when I was younger I was obsessed with Animal Farm and think I counted that I’d read the book 68 times at one point). It was one of the first poems I read that shifted the way I thought about reading and pointed towards what poems could do and conjure. Do you have an established writing routine? Not really. I like writing at night, but I think that’s just because I’ve always had jobs and writing poems in the day feels like a ludicrous guilty luxury. Poetry feels like a night-time art. You are involved in poetry through several mediums – for example, Tender, Granta, Clinic – do you get something different from each of them? I think I do, and I love the various elements of working on each project. Clinic and Tender are very different to Granta, as they are both projects I cofounded, and it’s wonderful

to watch something you thought up with friends grow up (!) to become an interesting platform for writers you admire, or had never heard of beforehand. With all three I work closely with other editors, so one of the primary things it’s taught me is much patience and compromise. It’s also shown me how precious people’s writing is to them, and how many people are writing and love to write. I guess it’s taught me to remember that every single poem I receive is a precious worked-on idea that someone has thought up and articulated in a certain way and spent time on. What are you passionate about? What pre-occupies you (in life, poetry, both)? My PhD is partly funded by a Marine Institute, and the scholarship itself was intended for a student to focus on the intersections between art and science, with a view towards thinking about how we perceive our natural environment, how we can think about ecological preservation, so this is preoccupying me currently! My best friend is an scientist, and he recently

sent me part of his PhD thesis, and I became obsessed with trying to understand the various things he was saying within this specialist language that felt ‘above’ me, or perhaps slightly alongside but out of my reach. It felt like a whole other universe of language that I could understand, if I tried, sitting presently just outside of my understanding, that had so much scope and potential to play with within a poem. To sound basic, the words felt so various: their absolute brute functionality, their pedantic placing, their

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history and etymology, the specialisms bound up in them. I found it fascinating, but at the same time felt and do feel like a complete tourist whenever he speaks to me about his work as a scientist. At the same time as he sent me his thesis, I was working on two things. The first was reading J.H. Prynne’s ‘The Plant Time Manifold Transcripts’. It’s so many things, but for me, it’s a statement of theoretical biology written in a way that could be considered a send up or a pastiche of scientists and science papers and pamphlets – a mind-boggling hypothesis that actually puts forward an incredible and silly and believable and strange idea about how plants exist, utilising scientific texts and formats. g

“THE WONDERFUL OVERLAPS BETWEEN METEOROLOGY, NEUROLOGY AND ZOOLOGY IN WORDS LIKE ‘CIRRUS’ OR ‘HIPPOCAMPUS’” – Sylvia Legris

these little collisions, the confusion and mishearings, the misreadings they sometimes engender. This is the stuff of poetry! What advice would you give to poets who are just starting to send out their work for consideration? Something that helped me (although I think a number of other people would probably warn against this! Depends on your character) was finding a group of like-minded people when I was about 18 or 19 to share my work with. I do have a resounding feeling that while writing poems is a very solitary pursuit

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(for me), in the end it’s quite communal, you’re published in anthologies with people and read to people – just the sheer fact of someone reading you is a kind of community built between reader and writer. Having a good group of people I felt able to share my poems with when I was younger was incredibly important to me, and I learned a lot quite quickly. What projects would you like to work on and/or complete in the future? We’re working on future projects at Clinic and Tender. For Clinic, we’re putting together a small publication called Ramifications which will focus on animal poems and include some vegan propaganda! n

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The second was an essay on Canadian poet Sylvia Legris, a poet who intersects various kinds of languages – medicinal, anatomical – and who has said in interviews she works with many different dictionaries around her. Both of these poets, at the moment for me, are my preoccupation! I think it’s Legris, in an interview for Prac Crit, who seems to sum up the feelings I’m badly trying to articulate, I’ll quote her here: The language of anatomy ‘inoculating’ that of botany, for example – all that sexy syntax of pistils and stamens, glans and glands. Or the wonderful overlaps between meteorology, neurology and zoology in words like ‘cirrus’ or ‘hippocampus’. I delight in

02.

TRAVEL Oslo, Norway [7]

CAKES AND ALE IN OSLO, MISO FOUND IBSEN, MUNCH AND NOBEL, DESSERT AND MICRO-BREWERIES WORDS

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CAROLINE JONES

Norway has the world’s best cake. At least the Norwegians think so; they voted verdens beste (roughly translated as “the best cake in the world”) their national cake 14 years ago. It’s still the favourite. So on 17 May this year – Norway’s Constitution Day – MISO picked a table outside Café Cathedral on Karl Johan’s Gate (Oslo’s main street) and ordered verdens beste. A plate of deliciously-layered sponge cake, whipped cream, almonds, meringue and fresh berries arrived topped with a mini

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Norwegian flag. The Constitution Day celebrations consisted of wearing the bunad (traditional Norwegian costume), flags displayed in shop windows, special 17 May sales, a National holiday and school children parading down Karl Johan’s Gate towards the Palace where the royal family waved from the balcony. In understated Oslo, these celebrations were bold and colourful. Oslo offers basement microbreweries and verging-on-secret restaurants. On its first night in the city, MISO tried to find Hell’s Kitchen, a well-recommended laid-back pizza and beer place. An hour later, MISO eventually ended up back on the street where it started and located Hell’s Kitchen on the corner of Møllergata 23 behind two unmarked wooden doors; from the outside, there was no indication of the casual booths, fresh pizzas and indie-rock inside. After dinner, MISO crossed the river Akerselva and headed for the east side of Oslo which is home to the city’s students, artists and designers; here it found a spirited and creative community. In an old cellar MISO discovered Schouskjelleren Mikrobryggeri – a dimly-lit and atmospheric micro-brewery with a vaulted brick ceiling and large fireplace, copper brewing vessels visible behind the bar and plenty of

dark brown wood tables and benches. Offering light to the darkness of Schouskjelleren, fellow micro-brewery Crow on Torggata had double-fronted floor-to-ceiling windows which folded away on this sunny evening enabling us to people watch while drinking one of their 20-plus beers on tap. Unlike Hell’s Kitchen, MISO easily located Crow due to the large black corvus head above the doorway. There are plenty of statues in and around Olso, from Vigeland Sculpture Park which displays the works of Gustav Vigeland to the statue of Norwegian historian Peter Andreas Munch in front of the old University buildings, and the country’s most famous playwright, Henrik Ibsen who stands outside the national theatre (Nationaltheatret). Ibsen, author of A Doll’s House, is the second mostfrequently performed dramatist in the world, exceeded only by Shakespeare. As well as sculptures, Oslo is rich in art – home to Edvard Munch’s The Scream (the National Gallery). Meanwhile, the Munch Museum houses The Scream’s sister painting The Despair, which has the same pier setting and colourful swirling skyline as Munch’s most famous work but instead of the pale screaming face features a darkhaired and desolate-faced man. When MISO visited the Munch museum

(which has had airport-like security ever since one version of The Scream was stolen at gunpoint from the museum in 2004), there was a special exhibition displaying Munch’s work alongside the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe drawing parallels between the two men’s work. Walking back to the city centre (along Oslo’s surprisingly uneven pavements), in the lobby to the Comfort Hotel Xpress Youngstorvet, Møllergata, MISO found two white art-pieces accompanied by a sign that read “This artwork was damaged in the July 2011 attacks – they are scarred but remain standing”. The capital does still bear the cicatrices of the van bomb detonated by Anders Behring Breivik on 22 July 2011. The Regjeringskvartalet district is – five years later – still boarded up although regeneration work is slowly beginning under the gaze of extensive security cameras. Breivik’s attacks (in the city centre and on the island of Utøya) caused the most amount of casualties (77) in Norway since the Second World War. Those who suffered as a result of WWII are also still remembered in Oslo, in particular at the Holocaust Centre (Norway’s Centreg

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Literature) are awarded in Sweden, it was Nobel’s wish that the Peace Prize be decided and presented in Norway each year, which it has since the first award in 1901. A photography exhibition on the ground floor (by German photographer Herlinde Koelbl), ‘Targets’, showed images taken at military training camps around the world of the targets (boards, dummies, posters and so on) that soldiers use when being trained to kill. Meanwhile, on the first floor was an exhibition room dedicated to the most recent recipients of the Peace Prize, the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet (2015). The permanent installation was a small room, its only lighting a ‘field’ of a hundred or so blue-purple bulbs on ‘stalks’ at waist height interspersed with iPads dedicated to each of the past winners in a non-chronological order; a curved path flowing through the room. Oslo provoked thoughts of war, peace and conflict resolution. It also provided inspiration through further discovery of its playwrights, painters, serene fjords and the abundance of opportunities to sit and reflect in micro-breweries with a Norwegian cherry beer. n

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for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities) on the Bygdøy peninsula, a short boat ride across the Oslo Fjord. The Centre had a permanent exhibition (in Norwegian but iPads were provided for those who do not speak Norwegian) which detailed the fate of Norwegian Jews during the Holocaust. On loan from the Buchenwald Memorial Centre were a pair of striped pyjamas (suspended in a glass display box) and a pair of toddler’s shoes. The final part of the exhibition was a white room with the names of the 765 Norwegian Jewish people who lost their lives listed in horizontal lines across the walls. Also on Bygdøy, and offering respite from the haunting Holocaust Centre, was The Viking Ship Museum. Providing much poetic inspiration the museum housed two 9th century wooden Viking ship discoveries from Viking tombs in and around the Oslo Fjord. The Oseberg ship contained two female human skeletons when it was excavated. Seeing these bones prompted MISO to recall Seamus Heaney’s North, in particular his poem, ‘Grauballe Man’, based on the bog body discovered in a peat bog near Jutland, Denmark in 1952. Back across the Oslo Fjord, MISO finished its inspiration-seeking trip with a visit to the Nobel Peace Centre. While Alfred Nobel was Swedish and four of the prizes (Chemistry, Physics, Physiology or Medicine, and

03.

NEW WRITING Poetry and prose [11]

When your tender hand rests on my ribs in the mornings, I panic my bones are wrong, this cage is too pronounced or not pronounced enough. They would complain, four of us crammed onto the backseat, my hips were jutting into their sides. Darling, I have tried to soften my bones.

‘Osseous Matter’ was long-listed in the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition 2015

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Originally published in: Buchan-Watts, Sam, Faber New Poets 15 (London: Faber & Faber, 2016)

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I have not yet learnt how to fall asleep next to you. I still fear my breath, the rise of my chest as my ribcage opens might disturb you. My nose, mouth, trachea, the alveoli of my lungs make too much noise. My sister used to fuss in the back of the car she could hear me, so I breathe quietly.

We woke feeling most baffled by the removal of things: what is left out for a damp autumn to rot? The pavilion is thin and unable to fend for itself. The suburb hasn’t room for its shabby opulence – delicate as a dried wasp caught on the sill. The boy runs out into the garden and marks in chalk a rhomboidal grid where he imagines the pavilion might have been. What use in the remark ‘autumn is coming’ when the roof isn’t there to catch it? The word ‘pavilion’ dismantles when he goes to use it like an old washing peg. The phrase ‘a chance of rain’ might go in its place; but the weather changes.

A pamphlet of Sam’s poems is published with Faber & Faber as part of the Faber New Poets series

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THE WORD PAVILION Sam Buchan-Watts

OSSEOUS MATTER Caroline Jones

ST. PAULI Libby Meredith

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MISSING PERSONS Dan Ryder Her mind begins to wander—severe weather warnings—an impending hurricane. The motel roof could be ripped right off & she wouldn’t lift a limb. That overbearing concierge—if thoughts could kill. Minutes earlier, the Atlantic swallowing the sun she retreated inside to the television. In a room of cardboard boxes she saw Florida crowds exalt as a man was executed. She hit pause, silence denied by clunk of air-con & carousel of crickets. She returned to her plate, slowly plunged her fork into lukewarm mac ’n’ cheese for one, heaved it up to her mouth & as it touched the tip of her tongue—she spat it out.

Dan Ryder is a poet from Doncaster and a recent graduate of the Manchester Writing School

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Elina opened the third-floor hostel window and breathed in the fresh Hamburg morning air. Hearing Sebastian start the shower in the bathroom, she watched the traffic below: cars, cyclists, dog walkers and morning commuters on foot. She observeded a girl in her twenties walking with a black tote bag emblazoned with a large white skull and crossbones and ‘St. Pauli’. Since arriving in Hamburg two days earlier, Elina and Seb had seen flags in flat windows, graffiti, street posters beneath layers of pealing paper and residents in hoodies all with the same motif. The bathroom door opened and she said: ‘I’ve just seen a girl with a St. Pauli bag.’ ‘Yeah?’ ‘I’d like to get one before we go home.’ Out on the street, the pair walked along holding hands in the early autumnal air. At the end of the road, they paused next to the pedestrian crossing. ‘We had such a nice meal in there,’ Elina said gesturing to the restaurant behind them. The couple had eaten there on their first night. It was close to the hostel and the only place serving food at 10pm on a Sunday. They’d discovered a cosy space; red and white checked cloths lay over the tables. The lighting was low and at the centre of each table there had been a candle. While Seb had eaten schnitzel, Elina had ordered a pizza which came with a brittle crust, and a topping of fresh tomatoes, mozzarella and prawns. The traffic lights turned red and the couple crossed the road. They walked past small local shops just opening up for the day to the Brotkorb bakery. They took their croissants and black coffee to a bench beneath a line of tall trees. As they ate, they noticed people with red balloons. ‘I wonder what’s going on?’ said Elina. As a group carrying balloons walked passed, Seb said, ‘There must be something going on at the market. The balloons say “Rindermarkthalle”.’ ‘Shall we go and have a look?’ The Rindermarkthalle St. Pauli was a large brick and glass building housing indoor fruit and vegetable stalls, delis, butchers, fishmongers, bakeries and fresh coffee stalls. The couple briefly wandered. As they left the building, a man holding balloons offered one to them; Elina took it. She tied it to her bag and the couple walked along the residential streets. ‘So we need to leave for the airport at about two,’ she said. g

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After leaving the shop, Elina and Seb walked in silence. ‘I want to get rid of the balloon,’ said Elina after a few minutes. ‘You could tie it to the playground railings on our way back later?’ ‘Good idea.’ As they approached the Reeperbahn Festival, they could hear loud live music. A homeless woman approached them. Speaking in German, she pointed at Elina’s bag. ‘Sorry, we are English,’ said Seb. ‘Do you speak English?’ ‘The, the…’ The homeless woman pointed at the balloon. ‘Oh,’ said Elina. ‘Yes, it’s the new market opening today.’ ‘My son. I…’ said the woman along with some German words. ‘I think she wants the balloon for her son,’ Seb said to Elina. ‘Do you want the balloon? You want this?’ Elina untied the balloon from her bag. ‘Yes, please,’ said the woman in broken English. ‘Thank you.’ The couple watched the homeless woman walk away up the side street, the red balloon bobbing along beside her. n Libby Meredith is a short story writer and literary translator. She lives in Amsterdam. [16]

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‘That gives us enough time to check out the music festival. ‘They might have a St. Pauli bag,’ Seb said, gesturing to a shop window displaying craft items, tea towels and wool hats decorated with anchors and skulls. Inside, the staff member behind the desk nodded at Elina’s balloon. ‘Has the Rindermarkthalle opened?’ asked the girl. ‘Yes,’ said Elina. ‘What’s it like?’ ‘It’s okay, very new. Quite expensive.’ ‘There has been a lot of opposition from local people towards it,’ said the girl. ‘We wanted the site to be used for affordable housing.’ ‘Oh, really?’ ‘We need something to help support local residents and businesses. We need places to live. Did you come in looking for something?’ ‘A St Pauli black tote bag?’ ‘We have some.’

04.

VOCABULARY Danish [17]

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kokosnød

fuglebur

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coconut MISO MAGAZINE | aw16

birdcage

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græskar

søstjerne

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pumpkin MISO MAGAZINE | aw16

starfish

flødeis

sunflower

ice-cream

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solsikke

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pariserhjul Ferris wheel

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Rachael Allen/ Libby Meredith Dan Ryder/Sam Buchan-Watts

www.misomagazine.co.uk ISSN 2397-9518