Ellen Doré Watson directs the Poetry Center at Smith College and serves as poetry editor for The Massachusetts Review. She is the author of four books of poems, including two from Alice James, We Live in Bodies and Ladder Music, winner of the New England/New York Award. Her most recent collection, This Sharpening, was published by Tupelo Press. Individual poems have appeared widely in literary journals, including The American Poetry Review, Tin House, and The New Yorker. She was named by Library Journal one of “24 Poets for the 21st Century.” Among her other honors are a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists Grant, a Rona Jaffe Writers Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship. She has translated a dozen books from the Portuguese, including The Alphabet in the Park, the selected poems of Brazilian Adélia Prado (Wesleyan University Press).

“Watson’s implementation of poetic form is as diverse as the range of experiences she explores…”
—Rain Taxi Review of Books

“Watson writes, ‘This is not strictly a story’—and she’s right, it isn’t. These poems are musical meditations on what cannot be narrated, but must be prayed or sung. . .”
—Publishers Weekly

“Ellen Doré Watson gives us the gift of a healthy dose of life in pray me stay eager, a book that lifts language up and invites it to its own self-investigation. . . This is a taut and wise collection, bustling with inventiveness and celebration of wonder. The craft is impeccable, the inner vision revelatory, and the humor affirming, the kind of courage we so need.”
—Afaa Michael Weaver