Photo by Frank Day

Ellen Doré Watson is the author of five full-length collections of poems, most recently, pray me stay eager, from Alice James Books. Earlier works include Dogged Hearts, from Tupelo Press, This Sharpening, also from Tupelo, and two from Alice James Books, We Live in Bodies and Ladder Music, winner of the New England/New York award. Watson’s journal appearances include APR, Tin House, Orion, Field, Ploughshares and The New Yorker. Among her honors are a Rona Jaffe Writers Award, fellowships to the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship. She has translated nine volumes from Brazilian Portuguese, most notably the poetry of Adélia Prado, including The Alphabet in the Park (Wesleyan University Press), Ex-Voto (Tupelo), and, The Mystical Rose, from the UK poetry publisher Bloodaxe Books. Watson served for decades as Poetry & Translation editor at The Massachusetts Review and Director of the Poetry Center at Smith College. Currently, she teaches in Fairfield University’s Low-Res MFA Program, leads generative workshops on Zoom, and takes on private students for developmental editing of poetry manuscripts.

More to come…