Emmanuel Macron: did a minister send him poems?

Emmanuel Macron has never hidden his taste for culture. The one for whom “the cultural question is a cement” has always made sure to take time to read, listen to music or go to the theater”, as Gala specifies. A passion that the Head of State shares with Brigitte Macron, also nicknamed the “Madame Culture of the Elysée”.

But the First Lady was not the only one to show her love for him in this area. In an interview with Le Parisien, the new Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul-Malak insisted on returning to a rumor according to which the latter sent poems to the President of the Republic every morning, when she was cultural and media adviser to Emanuel Macron. “At the Élysée, I sent a poem every morning to my colleagues and my bosses. Sometimes I would send it to the President, because I know he likes poetry, but not every day”.

When the President of the Republic traveled abroad, she also prepared a list of books for him to read. “He liked to know the culture and the literature of the country in which he was going”, she specifies in the columns of the local daily.

Daughter of a university professor, Rima Abdul-Malak was born in 1979 in Beirut. At the age of 10, she arrived in France and discovered cinemas, theaters and museums. According to her, school and culture have “liberated her from all this darkness that the Lebanese war before implanted in [her]”, as she indicates in her interview with Parisian.

A graduate of the Institut d’Etude Politique de Lyon in 1999 and a DESS in development and international cooperation from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, she embarked on the voluntary sector in the NGO Clowns sans Frontière.

From 2012 to 2014, she was appointed cultural adviser to the mayor of Paris: Bertrand Delanöe.

She then became cultural attaché at the French Embassy in New York before being appointed culture and media adviser to Emmanuel Macron in December 2019.

In May 2022, Elisabeth Borne suggested her name for the post of Minister of Culture. A position she has held since with the firm intention of being “a minister of action and on the ground”, she says. “I want to keep this passion, this audacity and this imagination which have been the strengths of ministry since André Malraux and Jack Lang”.