National Book Critics Circle Award Poetry Winners — Complete List (1975–2025)

• Night Watch by Kevin Young

  2025NBCCPoetry

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• Wrong Norma by Anne Carson

  2024NBCCPoetry

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  Phantom Pain Wings by Kim Hyesoon

  2023NBCCPoetry

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  Hotel Oblivion by Cynthia Cruz

  2022NBCCPoetry

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  Frank: Sonnets by Diane Seuss

  2021NBCCPoetry

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• Here Is the Sweet Hand by Francine J. Harris

  2020NBCCPoetry

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  Magical Negro by Morgan Parker

  2019NBCCPoetry

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  The Carrying by Ada Limón

  2018NBCCPoetry

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  Whereas by Layli Long Soldier

  2017NBCCPoetry

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  House of Lords and Commons by Ishion Hutchinson

  2016NBCCPoetry

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  Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay

  2015NBCCPoetry

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  Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

  2014NBCCPoetry

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  Metaphysical Dog by Frank Bidart

  2013NBCCPoetry

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

  2012NBCCPoetry

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  Space, In Chains by Laura Kasischke

  2011NBCCPoetry

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• One With Others by C.D. Wright

  2010NBCCPoetry

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• Versed by Rae Armantrout

  2009NBCCPoetry

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  Half the World in Light by Juan Felipe Herrera

  2008NBCCPoetry

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  Elegy by Mary Jo Bang

  2007NBCCPoetry

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  Tom Thomson in Purgatory by Troy Jollimore

  2006NBCCPoetry

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  Refusing Heaven by Jack Gilbert

  2005NBCCPoetry

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  The School Among the Ruins by Adrienne Rich

  2004NBCCPoetry

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  Columbarium by Susan Stewart

  2003NBCCPoetry

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

  2002NBCCPoetry

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  Saving Lives by Albert Goldbarth

  2001NBCCPoetry

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  Carolina Ghost Woods by Judy Jordan

  2000NBCCPoetry

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• Ordinary Words by Ruth Stone

  1999NBCCPoetry

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  The Bird Catcher by Marie Ponsot

  1998NBCCPoetry

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  Black Zodiac by Charles Wright

  1997NBCCPoetry

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  Sun Under Wood by Robert Hass

  1996NBCCPoetry

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• Time and Money by William Matthews

  1995NBCCPoetry

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  Rider by Mark Rudman

  1994NBCCPoetry

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  My Alexandria by Mark Doty

  1993NBCCPoetry

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  Collected Shorter Poems 1946–1991 by Hayden Carruth

  1992NBCCPoetry

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  Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology by Albert Goldbarth

  1991NBCCPoetry

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  Bitter Angel by Amy Gerstler

  1990NBCCPoetry

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  Transparent Gestures by Rodney Jones

  1989NBCCPoetry

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  The One Day by Donald Hall

  1988NBCCPoetry

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  Flesh and Blood by C.K. Williams

  1987NBCCPoetry

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  Wild Gratitude by Edward Hirsch

  1986NBCCPoetry

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  The Triumph of Achilles by Louise Glück

  1985NBCCPoetry

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  The Dead and the Living by Sharon Olds

  1984NBCCPoetry

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  The Changing Light at Sandover by James Merrill

  1983NBCCPoetry

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• Antarctic Traveler by Katha Pollitt

  1982NBCCPoetry
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  A Coast of Trees by A.R. Ammons

  1981NBCCPoetry

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  Sunrise by Frederick Seidel

  1980NBCCPoetry

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• Ashes: Poems New and Old and 7 Years From Somewhere by Philip Levine

  1979NBCCPoetry
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  Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L. E. Sissman by L. E. Sissman

  1978NBCCPoetry

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  Day by Day by Robert Lowell

  1977NBCCPoetry

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• Geography III by Elizabeth Bishop

  1976NBCCPoetry

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  Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery

  1975NBCCPoetry

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