  We report on an X-ray observation of the Be X-ray Binary Pulsar RX
J0059.2-7138, performed by XMM-Newton in March 2014. The 19 ks long observation
was carried out about three months after the discovery of the latest outburst
from this Small Magellanic Cloud transient, when the source luminosity was Lx ~
10$^{38}$ erg/s. A spin period of P=2.762383(5) s was derived, corresponding to
an average spin-up of $\dot{P}_{\mathrm{spin}} = -(1.27\pm0.01)\times10^{-12}$
s $s^{-1}$ from the only previous period measurement, obtained more than 20
years earlier. The time-averaged continuum spectrum (0.2-12 keV) consisted of a
hard power-law (photon index ~0.44) with an exponential cut-off at a
phase-dependent energy (20-50 keV) plus a significant soft excess below about
0.5 keV. In addition, several features were observed in the spectrum: an
emission line at 6.6 keV from highly ionized iron, a broad feature at 0.9-1 keV
likely due to a blend of Fe L-shell lines, and narrow emission and absorption
lines consistent with transitions in highly ionized oxygen, nitrogen and iron
visible in the high resolution RGS data (0.4-2.1 keV). Given the different
ionization stages of the narrow line components, indicative of photoionization
from the luminous X-ray pulsar, we argue that the soft excess in RX
J0059.2-7138 is produced by reprocessing of the pulsar emission in the inner
regions of the accretion disc.
