Tamar Yoseloff

1. My favourite film is Barry Lyndon. Some critics say that Ryan O’Neal’s performance is wooden, but his character is meant to be without emotion or remorse. Marisa Berenson stepped out of a Gainsborough painting; I like that her theme tune is Shubert’s Piano Trio in E Flat.
2. At university I had a pet rat named Cuthbert who used to sit on my shoulder. He liked chickpeas.
3. I cry at the end of The Way We Were. Every time.
4. I was once propositioned by Wreckless Eric.
5. I’m afraid of bats.
6. Whenever I’m in a new city, I always visit the local cemetery. The best is Woodland Cemetery on the outskirts of Stockholm. It has a modernist chapel built by Gunnar Asplund.
7. I once went to a Halloween party dressed as Millais’s Ophelia; I cellotaped plastic flowers onto a white nightgown.
8. My favourite word is “defibrillate”. I’ve even managed to get it into a poem.
9. I would like Beside You by Van Morrison to be played at my funeral.
10. My favourite novel is Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. It is short, simple and spare — like a good poem — and heartbreakingly sad.

Tamar Yoseloff’s new poetry collection The City with Horns is out now from Salt priced £9.99 RRP.

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