Description
The Watchful Heart Recedes
by Ellen Gerneaux Woods
$14.99, paper
978-1-64662-713-4
2021
Ellen Gerneaux Woods grew up in Indiana and came to California in the sixties to complete her BA in English at UC Berkeley. She was captivated by the Civil Rights Movement and after graduation devoted herself to paralegal work. She later received a MA in Psychology and worked as a psychiatric social worker for Alameda County for fifteen years. After retirement she dedicated herself to studying, writing and publishing memoir and poetry and her work appears in online and print journals and anthologies. Her debut memoir Warriors in Transition: A Memoir in Twenty-Eight Stories was published in 2014. She is a judge for the Prose Poem category of the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition and lives in Oakland, CA
Ellen Gerneaux Woods (Oakland, CA) writes poetry and memoir. Her debut memoir Warriors in Transition: A Memoir in Twenty-Eight Stories was published in 2014 and her poetry appears in print and on-line publications including Marin Poetry Center Anthology, The Bezine, Pudding Magazine, Is it Hot in Here Anthology, Persimmon Tree Magazine and Poems of Political Protest: An Anthology, among others. Her upcoming chapbook The Watchful Heart Recedes will be published by Finishing Line Press in Dec 2021.
Ellen has received prizes from the Soul-Making Literary Competition (2011-2014) and Mendocino Coast Writer’s Conference, and has curated submissions to Bay Area Generations, a monthly literary competition. She is currently a judge for the Prose Poem category of the Soul-Making Literary Competition and is on the prose editorial staff of The MacGuffin magazine. See her website https://ellenwoods.info for more info.
Lily (verified owner) –
I’m an avid reader of my mother’s poetry and love this collection about mothers and daughters,such an important topic. I highly recommend it!
Angie Minkin (verified owner) –
Ellen Gerneaux Woods has written a beautiful chapbook, filled with poems that will touch your heart and move your spirit. As a single mother, she wrestles with her own demons as she raises her daughter and discovers the joy and anxiety of parenthood. No matter how old our kids are, the “watchful heart recedes” but never loses its loving vigilance. Ellen is a truth-teller and her poems are spare and moving as she writes of birth, adoption, divorce, and families – and the universal theme of love. These are poems of courage, connection, and joy.
Elise Kazanjian (verified owner) –
I have loved listening to Ellen Woods reading her glorious poetry at events.
Her poems touch one’s heart and soul, and open different worlds and perspectives.
Her new book, “The Watchful Heart Recedes” does not disappoint. The poems speak to
all of us and hold us in their spell especially during these difficult times.
Christy Shepard (verified owner) –
Ellen Woods’ new book “The Watchful Heart Recedes” has touched a deep cord in me, as I know it will for others. Ellen’s poems are spare and vibrate with breathtaking clarity as she quietly delves into the sometimes painful yet frequently joyous terrain of motherhood, single parenting, adoption, family attachments and separations. Her open-heartedness and startling use of language to simply convey the complexities of living in this world have made me an undying fan of her poetry.
Abby Caplin (verified owner) –
In “The Watchful Heart Recedes,” Ellen Gerneaux Woods pulls the reader into her story with her quiet and descriptive style, self-aware as she navigates motherhood and witnesses moments of her daughter’s life. Woods’ writing is truthful and compassionate, questioning and poignant. Each poem is like a pearl added onto a strand, so that by the end of the book, I felt I was holding the precious necklace of their mother/daughter relationship in my hand.