Jorgenrique Adoum, widely-recognized as the most important Ecuadorian intellectual of the twentieth century, was an award-winning poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright. Of Lebanese descent, he was born in the Andean town of Ambato in 1926. During his lifetime, he published fourteen books of poetry. He belonged to a pioneering and yet often overlooked group of Spanish American poets known as “conversacionalistas,” who emphasize the orality of language, make use of the languages of the social sciences and mass media, and innovate by challenging poetic limits and by requiring an active reader, one considered a co-author. Adoum spent much of the sixties, seventies, and eighties in exile, mainly in Paris, returning to Ecuador in 1987, where he continued to write. He died in Quito in 2009 and is buried at the Chapel of Man, the museum and cultural center created by his friend, the outstanding visual artist Oswaldo Guayasamín.