National Book Critics Circle Award: poetry

The National Book Critics Circle Awards are annual American prizes that promote "the finest books and reviews published in English." The first awards were presented in 1976, for books published in 1975. There are now six awards for books published in the U.S. during the preceding year, in six categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography, memoir/autobiography, and criticism. 

2023: Phantom Pain Wings, by Kim Hyesoon

2022:  Hotel Oblivion, by Cynthia Cruz

2021: frank: sonnets, by Diane Seuss

2020: Here Is the Sweet Hand, by Francine J. Harris

2019: Magical Negro, by Morgan Parker

2018: The Carrying, by Ada Limón

2017: Whereas, by Layli Long Soldier

2016: House of Lords and Commons, by Ishion Hutchinson

2015: Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude, by Ross Gay

2014: Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine

2013: Metaphysical Dog, by Frank Bidart

2012: Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys, by D.A. Powell

2011: Space, in Chains, by Laura Kasischke

2010: One With Others, by C.D. Wright

2009: Versed, by Rae Armantrout

2008: Half the World in Light, by Juan Felipe Herrera

2007: Elegy, by Mary Jo Bang

2006: Tom Thomson in Purgatory, by Troy Jollimore

2005: Refusing Heaven, by Jack Gilbert

2004: The School Among the Ruins, by Adrienne Rich

2003: Columbarium, by Susan Stewart

2002: Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest, by B.H. Fairchild

2001: Saving Lives, by Albert Goldbarth

2000: Carolina Ghost Woods, by Judy Jordan

1999: Ordinary Words, by Ruth Stone

1998: The Bird Catcher, by Marie Ponsot

1997: Black Zodiac, by Charles Wright

1996: Sun Under Wood, by Robert Hass

1995: Time and Money, by William Matthews

1994: Rider, by Mark Rudman

1993: My Alexandria, by Mark Doty

1992: Collected Shorter Poems 1946-1991, by Hayden Carruth

1991: Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology, by Albert Goldbarth

1990: Bitter Angel, by Amy Gerstler

1989: Transparent Gestures, by Rodney Jones

1988: That One Day, by Donald Hall

1987: Flesh and Blood, by C.K. Williams

1986: Wild Gratitude, by Edward Hirsch

1985: The Triumph of Achilles, by Louise Glück

1984: The Dead and the Living, by Sharon Olds

1983: The Changing Light at Sandover, by James Merrill

1982: Antarctic Traveler, by Katha Pollitt

1981: A Coast of Trees, by A.R. Ammon

1980: Sunrise, by Frederick Seidel

1979: Ashes: Poems New and Old and 7 years From Somewhere, by Philip Levine

1978: Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman, by L.E. Sissman

1977: Day by Day, by Robert Lowell

1976: Geography III, by Eizabeth Bishop

1975: Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror, by John Ashbury