I never know what I’m thinking until I start writing it down. There is a sense of something I want to explore, but I find the distance between what I think I think and the finished article is usually about the width of the Grand Canyon. I always make sure to be prepared for a writing session by:

A) Stocking up on tea bags

B) Forgetting where I left the laptop charger

C) Putting off chores so I can abandon writing for an hour or two while I clean out the oven

D) Searching thesaurus.com for, uh... clever words (sorry, my internet is down today)

What usually begins as floundering in the deep end develops into confident strokes as ideas begin bubbling to the surface from the same depths of the brain that casually remind me in Tesco that I was supposed to pick up lemons.

This resurfacing is what I love most about writing these articles: it encourages every book (even the unfinished ones), every film (even the dumb ones), every lecture (even the dull ones), every experience (even the forgettable ones) to reappear. It surprises me that so much can leave a trace behind, sometimes so deeply that I can recall the experience as vividly as it originally happened, or so lightly that I mistake a line from a long forgotten book as my own. Traces are written all across us, physically and mentally, but they are also etched across the world.

Recently, I assisted Bridport documentarian Rob Jayne to film the Portland Players' performance of ‘Heart of Stone’, an epic poem/love letter to Portland’s history and the master stonemasons who spent their life digging out the infamous rock. The rehearsals took place in the Old Engine Shed, built by prisoners of the peninsula, which contained stone slabs imprinted with the footprints of dinosaurs. It is quite something to see a momentary step of a creature from a timescale beyond comprehension while the words of stonemasons long since passed echo around you. Traces can be ephemeral, like a fast-fading image drawn in condensation on a window pane, imperceptible and seemingly lost until revealed by heated breath.

Our latest publication of MOOP explores the theme of traces and the multifaceted ways this can affect both our internal selves and the external world around us. In the non-fiction segment, we have several pieces so excellent I am unnerved to share magazine space with them. Fred Warren’s urgent piece details his experience at a rewilding project and the desperate need to bring back the ghosts of Britain’s decaying ecosystem. Grace Crabtree explores the fascinating intersection of place and memory by examining Ernest Hemingway’s idolisation of his youth in 1920s Paris. Tom Beed delivers a blistering article about the recent devastating usurpation of power in Afghanistan. And in my article, ‘Fingerprints’, I take a look at the enjoyable, tactile quality of imperfect art.

In our fiction section, we have my favourite story so far from Stefan Matthews titled ‘The Case of the Blind Venetian’, a hilarious parody of hard-boiled noir with all the usual suspects. Also featured are two wonderful new poems and an introduction to the visual world of artist Lucinda Purkis.

Thank you so much for picking up this publication – I hope you thoroughly enjoy it and I hope, most of all, we are able to impart a trace, even if you aren’t yet aware of it.

Jack Wightman