Elly de Waard (Bergen (NH), 8 September 1940) is a Dutch poet, translator, reviewer and pop critic. Fifteen years of her hand reviews about pop music appeared in Het Vrije Volk, de Volkskrant and Vrij Nederland.
After the Murmellius Gymnasium, De Waard studied Dutch Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She lived in the sixties with poet Chr.J. van Geel. After his death in 1974, she started writing poetry herself. In 1978 she debuted as a poet with the collection Distance. Her most important examples were Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Vasalis and Ida Gerhardt.
In the eighties Elly de Waard was active in the women's movement, in particular the literary side. In 1986, together with Anja Meulenbelt, Renate Dorrestein and Caroline van Tuyll, she founded the Anna Bijns Foundation (named after early modern poet Anna Bijns), which awards a prize to a female author every two years.
Elly de Waard has also been a jury member for the Edison Music Award, P.C. Hooft Prize, VSB Poetry Prize, Herman Gorter Prize and the C. Buddingh Prize. From 2007 to 2008 she was a permanent employee of the weekly magazine Opinio.
