Clara-Læïla Laudette is a Paris-born, London-based writer/journalist. After reading English at the University of Oxford, she studied Arabic in Palestine. She’s mainly worked in journalism, most recently as Reuters correspondent in Madrid. Clara-Læïla writes in English, French, Spanish and a bit of Arabic. She won Magma’s 2024 Judge’s Prize, judged by Raymond Antrobus. Her poems were shortlisted for the Oxford Poetry Prize 2023 and longlisted for the 2023 National Poetry Competition and Mslexia’s 2023 Women’s Poetry prize. Her work is forthcoming in Oxford Poetry and has appeared in Pulp Poets Press, Cherwell literary supplement and No Bindings. She is also working on prose projects: a novel set in Conakry during West Africa’s Ebola epidemic, and an experimental memoir.
Email: claralaeila.laudette@gmail.com
IG: @laeilita_rising
Poems:
- São Jacinto song
- Mercy
Saõ Jacinto song
Our clams
they are local
they are from here
from Aveiro
– Joaõ, waiter at Faros Gourmet
From the crumbling kitchen with its pine copse view
I would try to spot the man who walked his
goats at dusk. Four goats: two on a lead, two
untethered. What instinct then, for ruckus
or escape, had peppered their track records
as village ambulants? They seemed to know
the road, its bushes and its bounds
— their buttock fur two dabs of white,
their coats all drenched in forest tones.
One lunchtime I saw another man
cycling on a crackly old thing, a dented
basket in the front, a live peacock
tucked under his arm. He answered
calls from homes lining the sun-seared street;
the neighbours knew him well
and no-one seemed surprised
at the bird
trailing its extravagance
over the spindly back wheel —
drowning the rust in a sheath of violet
emerald, indigo,
gold.
Mercy
She starts to say, You have
no experience but he
remembers the taste of his blood
spiking cheek and tongue, the tight half-beat
between wrong answer
smile, and blow.
He says, but surely it can’t be —
If you think about it —
It’s a really interesting —
but she sees the eager mouths
of those who would not learn,
who’d light pyres
claiming devil’s advocate
to keep their mirrored
dome from cracking.
This much energy
withholding belief
she explains
till up wafts a slow recall:
Here was gone, and There
was where he must now stay
but he was not
From Here.
You’re most privileged
among the privileged
he says and there it is
ragged breath rising in her ear
live weight against her Year 9 bag
hard prick goring her thigh
and bottomless shame when the métro doors snapped
at not knowing how to answer
Alors, ça t’a plu, hein, p’tite beurette?
NB: beurette – noun, fem., pejorative. Colloq. French word describing a girl or woman of North African descent; derived from the vernacular Verlan (à l’envers) which reverses words’ syllabic order. Here: Arabe => Beur/Beurette