What is at the Centre of Your World? #6

By Piper Delilah / April 2025

A Conversation with Léa Petges

Léa is a Paris-based poet and singer-songwriter. Her literary work alternates between poetry, fictional prose and non-fiction essays. In 2021, she published an article on the writer Colette in L’atelier du Roman, a writer who has an immense effect on her prose and poetics. Following her graduation as a teacher from La Sorbonne, she is in the process of publishing her book of poems 5’ More Seconds. Léa has collaborated poetically with a variety of painters, photographers and sculptors, which has resulted in her writings being exposed in numerous galleries since 2017.

‘Léa’s writing is a writing of impressions, and her composition of language delights effortlessly - somewhere between the she-wolf of Jean Lorrain and the eternal siren.’

(Recorded in Léa’s flat in Paris, whilst drinking tea and eating bacon.)

Piper: What is at the centre of your world?

Lea: Fuck, I haven’t thought about that at all. What is at the centre of my world? Growing I would say. That is something that is very at the centre. Growing, because everything that takes up space in my head, is growing. How can I grow in my relationships with my friends, I hear things and think, Ahh I could have done that better. Growing in my own love-orientated relationships, growing in my writing, growing in my music. Growing in my own space. I want to grow in this space (referring to her apartment) but it is so short-term, there are limitations all the time. Sometimes I also want to stop the process of growing to, just chill. Just relax because I am highly anxious. But I think when I stop growing I get even more anxious.

Piper: When I think of growing, I think of plants growing up. But perhaps for you, it’s growing into things?

Lea: Both, it is growing like a plant, catching enough sun, light, water. It is also growing into my art, my craft. Growing into a city, which I might leave if I can’t… trying to grow into Paris.

Piper: I understand your artistic pursuits, however for the discussion with you, I am going to start with music, into songwriting, into writing…

Lea: Although it is not the order it came in…

Piper: What order did it come in? Let’s do chronological.

Lea: First came academic writing, but at the same time I was in a relationship with a drummer for so many years. So I was linked to music all the time. I wanted to jam, and every time I would sing people would be like ‘Ahh (said with a soft gasp) I love your voice!’ I was like ‘No, no.’ But then I really wanted to write… to be fair, I wrote stories when I was little. I was always making up stories. But, in my nine years of academic studies, cinema, philosophy and literature, and very ancient literature too, I blocked and I stopped writing, because I was confronted with all of these big writers, you know, every day. And then I did a year essay, around four-hundred pages, about Margeurite Duras. She writes in this very… I was a specialist of her for one year, and she was writing in a very very simple way, very short sentences, sometimes just a few words. Sometimes non-verbal sentences, and I was like … (Lea gasps) because someone just broke the rules. I started writing poetry, doing my essay on Marguerite Duras, and I also started… actually that was the first year I took my guitar, in my little little fifteen square metre flat in the 17th and started writing a song for her. She is dead, but for one of her movies. It was inspired by India Song, you should check it out, she wrote it with…not Jane Birkin…but with someone else for her movie India Song. Anyway, so music was still very far away, I was like I am never going to make music, because also my boyfriend said ‘You don’t work, a musician works six hours a day!’ I was like ‘ughh, well I’m shit… I am zero.’ So I started writing poetry, what made me write was mostly images, all the time images. Paintings, photographs, I thought ahh that’s funny, maybe that is just the easy path, maybe I am just lazy. But then I was like, what if I make something out of it and I started collaborating with painters and photographers. That was in 2017. That lasted for a while. That put my words out, my writing grew, I started writing other short stories. Then Music arrived two years ago, very recently. I saw a psychic who said, ‘You need to sing’ and I was like ‘I sing for other people, it’s good.’ She goes ‘but you want to sing?’ and I said ‘But I am not a musician…’ and she said ‘but you have a whole book of poems that is done now?’ And true I did, I had a book of ninety-five poems that I put together, it is not out yet, it should be out in may. She said ‘In this book, I see at least five songs. Look for them.’ And at that point, I had just come back from America, New York, so I had a lot of stamina. My friend Iris, that I met in Mexico City, she was like ‘Lea, I am not going to view apartments until you have finished your poems.’ So she just came to my little house and was like ‘I am going to stay here all day if you don’t finish…’ in forty minutes I had a song. I took one of my poems and translated it into English, I was too shy to do it in French, and there came my first song, Icing Blue. It’s in my album right now. With her, I wrote three songs. I was writing alone, but she was telling me this is nice, this is not nice, she was showing me that she would have chills in parts. That was the cursor that you follow. Then happened Oscar, London and everything. Then now there is my album in the mix, and my book of poems.

Piper: It kind of feels like everything has gone whooooshooshoshosh.

Lea: Yes, a little bit.

Piper: Is there a difference between your processes and how you feel when you are writing poetry, how you feel when you are making music and singing?

Lea: I don’t have one way of writing poetry or one way of songwriting. I have maybe twenty, everyday it is different. Sometimes I write a poem in ten minutes, sometimes it takes me a week to write four sentences. As for songwriting, I go on my piano and if I have words coming, we call it yaourt yoghurt because we just make up a song with words. I do that sometimes, sometimes I take my notebook of poems, that helps a lot. Even though it’s hard because my melodies are not shaped the way the poem is shaped. Sometimes it clashes, there is not only one way. I have so many, I am not going to bore you with the details, but I have so many ways of writing.

Piper: I mean this is a question that’s related but unrelated, as you were talking about images…

Lea: That’s why I say my writing is impressionist, because it’s always from an image that I saw.

Piper: People remember things in different ways, do you remember through images? Do you have a photographic memory?

Lea: Not really, I need the image infront of me to write. I forget otherwise. I only know… I don’t write by memory. Like in South America I wrote every day, going into cafes and writing everything I saw, the whole time. Like little paintings but with words.

Piper: Do you feel as though, for example, if you put yourself in the same room with four simple walls, nothing on them, for seven days, do you think you could write something? Or do you need to be out in the world?

Lea: No, I could. I thought about it when I was fifteen I was so anxious and a bit bullied that I wanted to go to prison. I thought at least a convent, my dream; a convent or a prison. I have been wanting to write about that actually. I thought in a prison, I really will have no stories to write, and then thought, No, of course you will have a million. Like, what if you are in a ward? a psych ward, within four walls. I asked myself that question, because in prison, things happen, in a convent, things happen, but in a psych ward, if you are alone between four walls, what if? I think if I did that, my writing would come from introspection, which I hate doing because I think I am lazy. I take less pleasure in thinking, rather that creating analogies and images with my brain. That’s what gives me serotonin. When I see writing that is so clever, I am like Ha, that’s introspective writing, that is the fourth wall writing. I never do that, and struggle a lot. Kiss for example, I wanted to really… I thought, talk about your kiss with Rupert, the first time you kissed?  And then, Oh, let’s think about Kiss, what is it?...

Piper: Now I see it clearly… your comment on introspection having thought about the work of yours I have read, it completely makes sense, it has clicked in my mind. I find when I am writing…. I find it very difficult to be sat in a. environment I don’t know and write.

Lea: Really ?!

Piper: I can’t do it. I get incredibly distracted, by so many things. I have to sit in the same environment every time…

Lea: I understand that, I am getting more like that…

Piper: I write from memory though…

Lea: That’s why you need to be alone, memory can’t have any distraction.

Piper: I never call it non-fiction, there are always slight embellishments.

Lea: My favourite writer, Colette, who I did my second essay on, she is one of the pioneers of ‘Auto-fiction’ and that is exactly what you do. It’s based on my reality, but I add, I create around it. It’s not fiction, it’s not biography, it’s auto-fiction.

Piper: I know you were talking about Marguerite Duras, but are there any other authors you read and thought…

Lea: that’s my person?

Piper: Yes.

Lea: Colette. She is very different, she writes from impressions. Duras writes from feelings, complicated feelings. I met someone when I was doing my essay on her, ‘We were friends with her, we made movies with her…’ and asked them I tell me about her. They just said one thing ‘When we were around her and she would start speaking, everybody would shut up. And she would just, she would say something very simple but take five minutes to say it.’ She would wait for the word to come from her feet, through her legs, through her belly, through her chest. She would say something uncomplicated, she would just say a ‘cliché’ thing. But apparently people could see that she would go so deep, that is was not cliché. This is a bad example of what she said, I cannot remember what they told me. That’s what her writing does for me when I read it, it gives me shivers because it’s so transcendental. Colette, however, is my favourite writer because she knows the name of everything. She knows the name of plants, butterflies, birds, trees, colours, the corner of a wall. Everything has a shape and colour. She has a lexicon, not performative. It was 1880 to 1910, so people had a bigger vocabulary by then. She is the one that taught me about birds. That is why today I know so much. Colette.

Piper: When I first started writing, I was so performative. I was trying so hard.

Lea: Yes, me too. So many adjectives.

Piper: It’s trying so hard that you miss the complete point. The book I gave to Rupert The Summing Up, which I think you should also read, he says ‘Simplicity is just as much of a merit as lucidity.’

Lea: Oh yeh, my ex used to say that.

Piper: I think, as soon as I read that I realised how lucid I was attempting to be. That I was missing the mark.

Lea: Lucidity is like stroke lighting, it is things that happen Vooohhh, it is not something you can maintain consistently.

Piper: I think there is a big difference between lucidity and ambiguity. I love when things are slightly ambiguous…

Lea: With flashes of lucidity that you can take with your heart!

Piper: Yes! For me, prose, and this is subjective, I like being spoken to. I have taken concept that a story is a story, in the world of prose, being an author, you are a storyteller. Be that. Let’s try not detract from that singular fact, that is your basis. When people read they want to be told a story, it is as simple as that. I am rambling. If every time you were to walk into a room a song played, what would it be?

Lea: It can’t change!? It always has to be the same one? That’s like a curse!

Piper: It is subtle, like when you walk into a pub and a song plays…

Lea: I had one that came into my mind as soon as you said song, trust my body on this, it’s this Ethiopian pianist, Tsege Marium.

Piper: I know who. Song?

Lea: I love Evening Breeze, there’s so many. A Mother’s Love is one of favourites too. I could live with that curse. But it would all depend on my mood, if it was the morning it would be her. If it was the evening it would be California Dreamin’ for example… All the leaves are… I need songs for quiet, I need songs for hoping, I need Tom Waits ‘Green Grass’ sometimes to feel something! It really depends. It is hard to answer that, would need ten songs for ten moods of the day.

Piper: Usually people say one song, that’s it.

Lea: Sounds like a curse to me! One song! You know when need something subtle for the mood and it ends up telling you something about your mood. I need that song Oooh. No I need this song, Ooooh.

Piper: If I gave you a box of everything you had ever lost, tangible, intangible, what would you look for first?

Lea: My images from my documentary in Mexico. There was this jacket I had when I was a drama student, I had lost it on stage. After my Chekov piece, it was checkered black and white, I never went to retrieve it because I am a procrastinator. Now I have lost it. Things I have lost, I have lost a lot. With Rupert on our first date, I lost my phone in the Seine.

Piper: No…

Lea: We were just lying down giggling, I heard Gloop. He was like ‘Lea…’ and a week later I bought a new one, I put it in my back pocket, he arrived at the party, we went to the taxi, someone had stolen it. A week later, three phones in one week. But I lost so many things Piper. I would like to think about it deeply, there are things I miss from my childhood. Very intimate reasons, that I am not going to talk about…

Piper: That’s okay.

Lea:… there is a book about this mouse that I wrote about. I need to find it to figure out something that happened to me. So that is a book I would like to find. Tangible things, tangible things. Then intangible things, friendships. My first best-friend, Genvieve, that didn’t answer my message for four years, I thought she was dead. I have lost so many things! I have lost a stupid cashmere jumper in New York that I really like. One from my mum. So many things.

Piper: You gave a plethora of answers there.

Lea: I am not a silent thinker, I speak in order to think.

Piper: I think out loud too. When it comes to subjects on lyrics, poetry, is there any particular themes or objects you focus on?

Lea: I love interactions between people, love writing about that, picking up on conversations, movements, gestures that they have toward each other. I used to do that a lot. Recently, with The Fools Press it has been different. It has been more about my states in a week, it has been more introspective. But if I write in a café, it’s going to be about the hair of that person, the colour of their skin, if the neck is different from the cheek.

Piper: I don’t know if you photograph or not…

Lea: I used to alot, seven years ago. I stopped.

Piper: Why?

Lea: Oh god, good question, why do I stop everything all the time. Because I judge myself, thinking all of this is going to be for nothing. I discourage myself, very easily.

Piper: Do you think, why am I doing all these things, where am I going with it all?

Lea: Yes, that question kills me.

Piper: This is a roundabout comment, especially with Junk and Kiss (upcoming issues of the weekly paper) I have nothing to write about. I thought just tick tick tick because I write on typewriter. When you sit and force yourself to write, you have to force inspiration in a way…

Lea: When I start writing about nothing, it’s very rare that I am happy about what I write. I usually need… it’s a current, it’s like a water current. We are all made of water right, so I believe it is like a stream, it is like vooooh like a wave, Ahh ok I know what I am going to write about. If I don’t have that, then sometimes I am just like write, write, write. And sometimes there is a story there, sometimes a story arrives. I wrote a whole book with just a story that pulled me, it was about a boy now it’s my only novel I have. It is sixty pages long and I don’t know what I am going to do with it. I translated it into English last month. I sat and thought,  what do you want to read about? Everyday my fingers were writing for me what I wanted to read about. I had no idea where it was going, but then I thought to make a plan of chapters, which gave me a skeleton.

Piper: When you are writing in particular, literature, do you know how something will end, or do you always write without knowing the outcome?

Lea: I never know how it is going to end. Just that once, that novel I wrote. Even then, I just knew I wanted a reconciliation in the end. But poetry, I never know how it is going to end. I don’t think I have ever known. Never.

Piper: I can’t do that, when I start I always know exactly how it is going to end. But worry occasionally that I am restricting myself. What do you hope people notice about you when they first meet you?

Lea: When they meet me what do I want them to see?

Piper: What do you hope they notice?

Lea: My cheekiness, I don’t think I show it well with other people.

Piper: I think you do.

Lea: Also I want people to feel safe. I have been bullied so much, had so much jealousy about me, I just want people to know I am not a threat. I am also moving out of that, I am thirty now, and if they want to see me as a threat, then fuck them. I have apologised my whole life for being who I am, now, if you can’t take me, I am not going to lose my time anymore. I am not a threat.

Piper: You are safe, and incredibly cheeky in an environment where you feel safe. That’s maybe the way I perceive you, when you feel comfortable to express.

Lea: You have seen me cheeky and safe and not? I make you feel safe?

Piper: When I met you the first time in your apartment, me and Xan came in and thought Lea is so sweet! This is me being truthful, occasionally when having seen you in London, you can be quite shy, but it’s a new environment.

Lea: My cheekiness sometimes doesn’t come across because I am shy, I am shy. Some people don’t think that I am shy because I am so talkative. I love connecting with people.

Piper: I am the same. Last question, what do hope people think when they read your work?

Lea: I want them to come into the bubble I have created, feel the substance of it. Like a plasma, almost like a womb, just come in it like in science fiction. They can smell it, feel it and the emotion gains them. That’s what I want.