Mostly, I Tell the Truth
Mostly, I Tell the Truth
Available in both print and digital formats.
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.
Additional Praise:
More to come…
More by Ellen Doré Watson:
Ellen Doré Watson
“It is precisely Watson’s poetic willingness to be subverted, both emotionally and formally, that makes this collection so valuable. One finishes it with the impression of a fiery, intrepid voice turning and turning over the images and things of this world looking for hope and love, but always suspicious of both, and always suspicious of easy expression.” —Poet Lore
ISBN: 9781882295302
Ellen Doré Watson
“With its clear voice, sexiness, paradoxes, and fiery pulse, Doré Watson’s book will certainly send ripples in the too often monotonously safe lakes of contemporary poetry—and I’m grateful for that. We Live in Bodies is resonant with passion and emotional courage . . . at once irresistibly funny, moving, lighthearted, and grave.” —The Bloomsbury Review
ISBN: 9781882295128
Ellen Doré Watson
2019 Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist
“…[an] exuberant poetry collection…”
—The New York Times Book Review
January 2018
ISBN: 9781938584688
Featured:
Kevin Goodan
“[Anaphora has] heart-searing intensity. . .”
—Library Journal
October 2018
ISBN: 9781938584961
Iain Haley Pollock
". . . Pollock delivers moments of levity, lyric beauty, and a creeping melancholy that lend his work its distinct atmosphere."
—Publishers Weekly
September 2018
ISBN: 9781938584954
Andrés Cerpa
A Book Riot Must-Read Poetry Collection
Recommended by Foundry Journal
"With fierce despair and wisdom hard won through pain...these experiences have sharpened Cerpa’s stunning, dark observations and sparked chilling lines.”
—Publishers Weekly
January 2019
ISBN: 9781938584978
Mia Ayumi Malhotra
2019 Winner of the Maine Literary Award for Excellence in Publishing
The 2018 Nautilus Gold Award Winner
“At the Empress: An Epithalamium” named the winner of the 2019 Singapore Poetry Contest
One of Electric Lit’s 10 Books of Poetry that Highlight the Diversity of Asian America
One of Entropy Magazine’s 2018 Best Poetry Books
Top Fall Poetry Collection from Library Journal
“By turns delicate and anguished, the poems [in Isako Isako] ask how one can recover—and recover from—experiences that are not one’s own.”
—Publishers Weekly
September 2018
ISBN: 9781938584947
Donald Revell
2018 Balcones Poetry Prize Finalist
“Thoroughly integrating sacred and secular, Revell produces a book of love and rapture.”
—Publishers Weekly
May 2018
ISBN: 9781938584763
Anna Rose Welch
“This is How You Beg” recognized as a special mention in Pushcart Prize XLIII
"Welch digs deep into desire, origin, and the chaos of creation in a debut collection of rich, sensuous poems that juxtapose scriptural material with the sexual."
—Publishers Weekly
April 2018
ISBN: 9781938584756
Monica A. Hand
2019 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Nominee
“DiVida stands as a timeless presence burdened by the injustices of systemic racism. Her power is rooted in black women’s ability, born of necessity, to inhabit their bodies in multiple ways.”
—Publishers Weekly
April 2018
ISBN: 9781938584749
Jennifer Chang
Winner of the 2018 William Carlos Williams Award
Longlisted for the 2018 PEN Open Book Award
A 2017 Poets.org Noted Book of the Year
12th Annual National Indie Excellence Award Winner
2017 Julie Suk Award Longlist Finalist
A 2017 Minnesota Public Radio Best Book of the Year
A 2017 Beltway Poetry Quarterly Best Book of the Year
A Lit Hub Book that Deserved More Attention in 2017
Recommended by the New York Public Library
“Chang is fearless in taking on traditional notions of what poetry can do to the self and to the natural world.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books
October 2017
ISBN: 9781938584664
Kaveh Akbar
Winner of the John C. Zacharis First Book Award
2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Gold Winner
2018 Levis Reading Prize Winner
2017 Julie Suk Award Winner
A 2017 Nautilus Silver Award Winner
2017 Florida Book Award Gold Winner
A 2018 First Horizon Award Winner
Winner of the 2018 Eric Hoffer Small Press Award
Shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Award Grand Prize
A 2018 Montaigne Medal Finalist
A 2017 NPR Best Book of the Year
A 2017 Library Journal Best Book of the Year
A 2017 Entropy Magazine Best Book of the Year
A 2017 The Coil Best Book of the Year
A 2017 Sundress Publications Best Book of the Year
A 2017 Indianapolis Monthly Best Book of the Year
A 2017 Largehearted Boy Best Book of the Year
A 2017 Volume 1 Brooklyn Best Book of the Year
A 2017 Interview Best Book of the Year
“A breathtaking addition to the canon of addiction literature, Akbar’s poetry confronts the pain and joy in denying oneself for the sake of oneself…Akbar’s poems offer readers, religious or not, a way to cultivate faith in times of deepest fear.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
September 2017
ISBN: 9781938584671
June Jordan
Edited by Christoph Keller & Jan Heller Levi
A 2017 Poets.org Noted Book of the Year
A 2017 Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
An Oprah.com Editor’s Pick for New Collections by and About Bold, Free-Spirited Poets, Nov. 2017
12th Annual National Indie Excellence Award Winner
“Jordan begs us to trust one another and to tell the truth, to read the world more closely, to learn the wisdom of those who came before, who resisted before, and loved before. She laid a foundation, leaving a revolutionary blueprint for poetry to transform our lives beyond the white gaze and its literary imagination. . . .This book is not just a collection of figurative words; it is a tool for liberation.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review by Aja Monet
September 2017
ISBN: 9781938584350
Ellen Doré Watson
More to Come…
May 2028
ISBN: 9781967149193