Born in Bergen, she is also a pop critic. Elly is the leader of a group of young female poets called De Nieuwe Wilden (The New Savages), founded in the late 1980s. The character of her poetry has developed from sober and reticent to ecstatic and explicitly lesbian.

Elly tested the literary waters in the late 1970s with two, rather subdued, collections: Afstand (Distance) and Luwte (Shelter). Her poetic voice broke free in Furie (Fury, 1981), that contains all the elements of De Waard's later work: the theme of romantic love, the longing, the eroticism, the interweaving of modern themes with those of the classical poetic tradition.

Her trilogy Eenzang (three collections of poems written in two-line stanzas) , include works that give expression to the full range of lesbian love and sexuality.'. In her latest collection Anderling (1998) she has once more abandoned strict form and allowed herself room to expand in breathing, free-moving verse.