Esteban Quispe is a recent graduate and independent researcher with an M.A. in French (University of Louisiana at Lafayette 2017) whose personal background is in both Peru and French Louisiana. Although his current research delves into various aspects of orality and poetics in French and Creole Louisiana, his journey into poetry began as a McNair scholar undertaking a translation-based research project under the mentorship of Dr. Leslie Bary. In César Moro's The Equestrian Turtle, he discovered the watery, mutable depths of Spanish and French surrealist poetry, which led him to the very foundations of surrealist poetry and, ultimately, to the roots of poetry itself.