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  • April 17, 2023

Maya Cousineau Mollen, poet in residence at the Biosphère

  • Biosphère
Maya Cousineau Mollen, poet in residence at the Biosphère
  • Maya Cousineau Mollen, poet in residence at the Biosphère
  • Bréviaire du matricule 082 and Enfants du lichen

Poet in a writing residency

The Biosphère invited Maya Cousineau Mollen to work at the museum and its immediate environment for a full year.

This writing residency will be an opportunity to inspire more profound thought about the environment. For some time, Maya’s poetry has expressed a deep commitment to the land and a concern for all the news and issues connected to climate change. Through her words, she is fostering a dialogue on some difficult subjects, while creating images of great tenderness and clarity.

Maya Cousineau Mollen will also participate in the creation of a series of activities and public meetings while working in Parc Jean-Drapeau. Visit our website regularly to stay updated!

Biography

Maya Cousineau Mollen, who is from the Innu (Montagnais) Nation, was adopted in the traditional way by a Quebec family with the consent of her Innu mother. Encouraged by her adoptive parents, she began writing poetry at the age of 14. This form of expression has always been an important part of her life. Elements of her work have been published in anthologies and literary magazines. She is also the author of a short story in the collection Amun, edited by Michel Jean. In September 2019, Maya published her first full collection of poetry, Bréviaire du matricule 082, with the publishing house Hannenorak. Her second collection, Enfants du lichen, was put out last spring by the same publishers.

Maya has worked in the First Nations world for more than 25 years. She founded the Aboriginal Student Association at Laval University and co-founded the First Nations of Québec and Labrador Youth Council (now the First Nations of Québec and Labrador Youth Network). She has great faith in the potential of youth and strongly believes that their energy and willpower deserve to be encouraged.

Maya Cousineau Mollen was a community development advisor for the firm EVOQ Architecture. She acts as an ambassador for this team, which has been working with Inuit and First Nations populations for more than 45 years. She has recently joined the team of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec as project manager for relations with First Peoples.

She was involved in the controversial play Kanata from its beginnings. There she met Ariane Mnouchkine, who wrote the preface of her poetry collection Bréviaire du matricule 082, sealing the bond of “an unlikely friendship.” Maya returned to Paris in 2019, at the invitation of the famous stage director, for a one-month writing residency."