Presentation

As part of the Cassandra Festival, La Monnaie is hosting Les Midis de la poésie for the first time. The event will present two contemporary Cassandras who took to the pen to express their commitment: the Innu poets Rita Mestokosho and Maya Cousineau Mollen.

An activist and campaigner, Rita Mestokosho is the first Innu woman to have published poetry. Her collection Comment je perçois la vie, grand-mère was published in 1995. After completing her university studies, Rita Mestokosho returned to her native village of Mingan to work in the field of education. At the request of the local women, she became a councillor on the Ekuanitshit Innu Council. She is an ardent defender of the life and heritage of her people.

Originally from the Innu community of Ekuanitshit, Maya Cousineau Mollen has been working in First Nations communities for more than twenty-five years. She is in charge of First Peoples projects for the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. In 2019 she published her first collection of poetry, Bréviaire du matricule 082, which won Canada’s Indigenous Voices Award for French poetry. Her second collection, Enfants du lichen, was published in 2022 and won the Governor General’s Award, the first French-speaking indigenous woman to do so.