Moustapha Mohamed Chein is a poet whose work moves across continents and languages. Born in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, and raised in Nouakchott, Mauritania, he carries the dual memory of two lands into a body of work preoccupied with exile, memory, and belonging.
Poetry entered his life through the loss of his father—a poet, writer, lawyer, and senator—and became, in his words, a bridge between absence and presence. His writing draws on a wide lineage: the lyricism of Mahmoud Darwish, Nizar Qabbani, and Khalil Gibran; the nomadism of Habib Ould Mahfoudh; the Négritude of Léopold Sédar Senghor and Aimé Césaire; and the formal freedom of Guillaume Apollinaire, whose unpunctuated rhythms shaped his own experiments with the line.
Alongside his poetry, Chein trained in law, completing his Québec Bar qualification in 2023. He now lives in Montreal, where he writes work shaped by grief, love, and the search for a place to belong. His collection I Was Born with Sand in My Eyes is published by Mawenzi House.
