Minou Drouet – A Poet, Actor & Former Musical Prodigy

Marie-Noelle Drouet, popularly known as Minou Drouet was born on 24 July 1947 in La Guerche-de-Bretagne, France. She was an incredible poet, musician, and actor. Her story is very curious yet interesting and inspiring to know.

Biography

Drouet gained recognition and fame in 1955 when a few of her poems and letters circulated privately among French writers and publishers. It generated controversy over whether or not Drouet’s mother Claude was their true author. Minou soon cleared much of their doubt by writing poems in front of them without her mother’s presence. She also gave one such type of test by writing a poem to gain admission to France’s Society of Authors, Composers, and Music Publishers. This former prodigy also learned piano and guitar. Drouet toured as an author and musician throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s. Jean Cocteau says about Drouet, “Tous les enfants ont du génie sauf Minou Drouet,” which means “All nine-year-old children have genius, except Minou Drouet”. Michel Attenoux named his “Minou Drouet Stomp”, after her, featuring Sidney Bechet.

Marie Drouet worked as a nurse for two years after her grandmother became ill around 1966. After that, she returned to public life as a singer-songwriter and children’s novelist. She also wrote an adult novel; its title in English translation was Donatella.

Current Life Of Minou Drouet

Drouet eventually returned to her childhood home in La Guerche-de-Bretagne. The multitalented former prodigy now lives with her husband Jean-Paul Le Canu. She has left public life except to publish Ma veritea, a memoir, in 1993. New Yorker critic Robert Gottlieb describes Ma verite as “reticent and skimpy,” saying that it focuses on facts rather than subjective interpretations of Drouet’s childhood.

Works in English

• Arbre, mon ami, translator Christine Tacq. Thame [England] : 1998.
• Then there was fire translator Margaret Crosland, London : Hamish Hamilton, 1957.

Books by Minou Drouet

• Du brouillard dans les yeux (1966)
• La Patte bleue (1966)
• Poemes., Geneve, R. Kister, 1956.
• Arbre, mon ami (1957)
• Le Pecheur de lune (1959)
• Ouf de la foret (1968)
• La Flamme rousse (1968, illustrated by Daniel Billon)
• Ma verite (1993)
• Then there was fire (1957), translated by Margaret Crosland

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