Governor General's Award for English-language poetry

This is a list of recipients and nominees of the Governor General's Awards award for English-language poetry. The award was created in 1981 when the Governor General's Award for English language poetry or drama was divided.^[1]

Winners and nominees

1980s

Year	Author	Title	Ref.
1981	F. R. Scott	The Collected Poems of F. R. Scott	[2]
	Alfred Bailey	Miramichi Lightning: Collected Poems
	Barry McKinnon	The The
1982	Phyllis Webb	The Vision Tree: Selected Poems	[3]
	Robert Bringhurst	The Beauty of the Weapons: Selected Poems 1972-1982	[4]
	Barry Dempster	Fables for Isolated Men
	Diane Keating	No Birds or Flowers
1983	David Donnell	Settlements	[5]
	Christopher Dewdney	Predators of the Adoration: Selected Poems 1972-82	[6]
	Don McKay	Birding, or Desire
	Anne Szumigalski	Doctrine of Signatures
1984	Paulette Jiles	Celestial Navigation	[7]
	Roo Borson	The Whole Night, Coming Home	[8]
	Marilyn Bowering	The Sunday Before Winter
	David McFadden	The Art of Darkness
	Sharon Thesen	Confabulations
	Peter van Toorn	Mountain Tea
1985	Fred Wah	Waiting for Saskatchewan	[9]
	Lorna Crozier	The Garden Going on Without Us	[10]
	Richard Lush	A Manual for Lying Down
	Anne Szumigalski	Instar
1986	Al Purdy	The Collected Poems of Al Purdy	[11]
	Christopher Dewdney	The Immaculate Perception	[12]
	John Newlove	The Night the Dog Smiled
1987	Gwendolyn MacEwen	Afterworlds	[13]
	Di Brandt	Questions I Asked My Mother	[14]
	Roy Kiyooka	Pear Tree Pomes
	Sharon Thesen	The Beginning of the Long Dash
1988	Erín Moure	Furious	[15]
	Lorna Crozier	Angels of Flesh, Angels of Silence	[16]
	Christopher Dewdney	Radiant Inventory
	David McFadden	Gypsy Guitar
	Peter Dale Scott	Coming to Jakarta
1989	Heather Spears	The Word for Sand	[17]
	Tim Lilburn	Tourist to Ecstasy	[18]
	Stephen Scobie	Dunino

1990s

Year	Author	Title	Ref.
1990	Margaret Avison	No Time	[19]
	Dionne Brand	No Language Is Neutral	[20]
	Patrick Lane	Winter
1991	Don McKay	Night Field	[21]
	Don Domanski	Wolf-Ladder	[22]
	Judith Fitzgerald	Rapturous Chronicles
	Patrick Lane	Mortal Remains
	Anne Michaels	Miner's Pond
1992	Lorna Crozier	Inventing the Hawk	[23]
	Evelyn Lau	Oedipal Dreams	[24]
	Laura Lush	Hometown
	Steve McCaffery	Theory of Sediment
	Kathleen McCracken	Blue Light, Bay and College
1993	Don Coles	Forests of the Medieval World	[25]
	Claire Harris	Drawing Down a Daughter	[26]
	Monty Reid	Crawlspace: New and Selected Poems
	Douglas Burnet Smith	Voices from a Farther Room
	Patricia Young	More Watery Still
1994	Robert Hilles	Cantos from a Small Room	[27]
	Robin Blaser	The Holy Forest	[28]
	Polly Fleck	The Chinese Execution
	Monty Reid	Dog Sleeps
1995	Anne Szumigalski	Voice	[29]
	Roo Borson	Night Walk	[30]
	Di Brandt	Jerusalem, Beloved
	Don Domanski	Stations of the Left Hand
	Steven Heighton	The Ecstasy of Skeptics
1996	E. D. Blodgett	Apostrophes: Woman at a Piano	[31]
	Elizabeth Brewster	Footnotes to the Book of Job	[32]
	Crispin Elsted	Climate and the Affections
	Charles Lillard	Shadow Weather
	Erín Moure	Search Procedures
1997	Dionne Brand	Land to Light On	[33]
	Marilyn Bowering	Autobiography	[34]
	Patrick Friesen	A Broken Bowl
	Carole Glasser Langille	In Cannon Cave
	Don McKay	Apparatus
1998	Stephanie Bolster	White Stone: The Alice Poems	[35]
	Louise Bernice Halfe	Blue Marrow	[36]
	Michael Ondaatje	Handwriting
	Lisa Robertson	Debbie: An Epic
	Kathy Shaidle	Lobotomy Magnificat
1999	Jan Zwicky	Songs for Relinquishing the Earth	[37]
	Lynn Davies	The Bridge that Carries the Road	[38]
	Susan Goyette	The True Names of Birds
	Richard Harrison	Big Breath of a Wish
	Terence Young	The Island in Winter

2000s

Year	Author	Title	Ref.
2000	Don McKay	Another Gravity	[39]
	George Bowering	His Life	[40]
	A. F. Moritz	Rest on the Flight into Egypt
	John Pass	Water Stair
	Patricia Young	Ruin and Beauty
2001	George Elliott Clarke	Execution Poems	[41]
	Anne Carson	Men in the Off Hours	[42]
	Phil Hall	Trouble Sleeping
	Robert Kroetsch	The Hornbooks of Rita K.
	Steve McCaffery	Seven Pages Missing
2002	Roy Miki	Surrender	[43]
	Tammy Armstrong	Bogman's Music	[44]
	Colin Browne	Ground Water
	Kathy Mac	Nail Builders Plan for Strength and Growth
	Erín Moure	O Cidadán
2003	Tim Lilburn	Kill-site	[45]
	Tim Bowling	The Witness Ghost	[46]
	Evan Jones	Nothing Fell Today But Rain
	Anne Simpson	Loop
	Tom Wayman	My Father's Cup
2004	Roo Borson	Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida	[47]
	Tim Bowling	The Memory Orchard	[48]
	David Manicom	The Burning Eaves
	John Terpstra	Disarmament
	Jan Zwicky	Robinson's Crossing
2005	Anne Compton	processional	[49]
	Barry Dempster	The Burning Alphabet	[50]
	Erín Moure	Little Theatres
	W. H. New	Underwood Log
	Olive Senior	Over the Roofs of the World
2006	John Pass	Stumbling in the Bloom	[51]
	Ken Babstock	Airstream Land Yacht	[52]
	Elizabeth Bachinsky	Home of Sudden Service
	Dionne Brand	Inventory
	Sharon Thesen	The Good Bacteria
2007	Don Domanski	All Our Wonder Unavenged	[53]
	Margaret Atwood	The Door	[54]
	Brian Henderson	Nerve Language
	Dennis Lee	Yesno
	Rob Winger	Muybridge's Horse
2008	Jacob Scheier	More to Keep Us Warm	[55]
	Weyman Chan	Noise from the Laundry	[56]
	A. F. Moritz	The Sentinel
	Sachiko Murakami	The Invisibility Exhibit
	Ruth Roach Pierson	Aide-Mémoire
2009	David Zieroth	The Fly in Autumn	[57]
	David McFadden	Be Calm, Honey	[58]
	Philip Kevin Paul	Little Hunger
	Sina Queyras	Expressway
	Carmine Starnino	This Way Out

2010s

Year	Author	Title	Ref.
2010	Richard Greene	Boxing the Compass	[59]
	Michael Harris	Circus	[60]
	Daryl Hine	&: A Serial Poem
	Sandy Pool	Exploding into Night
	Melanie Siebert	Deepwater Vee
2011	Phil Hall	Killdeer	[61]
	Michael Boughn	Cosmographia: A Post-Lucretian Faux Micro-Epic	[62]
	Kate Eichhorn	Fieldnotes, A Forensic
	Garry Thomas Morse	Discovery Passages
	Susan Musgrave	Origami Dove
2012	Julie Bruck	Monkey Ranch	[63]
	David McGimpsey	Li'l Bastard	[64]
	A. F. Moritz	The New Measures
	Lisa Pasold	Any Bright Horse
	James Pollock	Sailing to Babylon
2013	Katherena Vermette	North End Love Songs	[65]
	Austin Clarke	Where the Sun Shines Best	[66]
	Adam Dickinson	The Polymers
	Don Domanski	Bite Down Little Whisper
	Russell Thornton	Birds, Metal, Stones & Rain
2014	Arleen Paré	Lake of Two Mountains	[67]
	Julie Joosten	Light Light	[68]
	Christopher Levenson	Night Vision
	Garth Martens	Prologue for the Age of Consequence
	Sadiqa de Meijer	Leaving Howe Island
2015	Robyn Sarah	My Shoes Are Killing Me	[69]
	Kayla Czaga	For Your Safety Please Hold On	[70]
	Liz Howard	Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent
	M. Travis Lane	Crossover
	Patrick Lane	Washita
2016	Steven Heighton	The Waking Comes Late	[71]
	Joe Denham	Regeneration Machine	[72]
	Susan Holbrook	Throaty Wipes
	Garry Thomas Morse	Prairie Harbour
	Rachel Rose	Marry & Burn
2017	Richard Harrison	On Not Losing My Father's Ashes in the Flood	[73]
	Lorna Crozier	What the Soul Doesn't Want	[74]
	Nora Gould	Selah
	Benjamin Hertwig	Slow War
	Julia McCarthy	All the Names Between
2018	Cecily Nicholson	Wayside Sang	[75]
	Billy-Ray Belcourt	This Wound Is a World	[76]
	Dionne Brand	The Blue Clerk
	Joshua Mensch	Because: A Lyric Memoir
	Jason Stefanik	Night Became Years
2019	Gwen Benaway	Holy Wild	[77]
	Julie Bruck	How to Avoid Huge Ships	[78]
	Karen Houle	The Grand River Watershed: A Folk Ecology
	Catherine Hunter	St. Boniface Elegies
	Armand Garnet Ruffo	Treaty #

2020s

Year	Author	Title	Ref
2020	Anne Carson	Norma Jeane Baker of Troy	[79]
	Oana Avasilichioaei	Eight Track	[80]
	Donna Kane	Orrery
	Canisia Lubrin	The Dyzgraphxst
	Sachiko Murakami	Render
2021	Tolu Oloruntoba	The Junta of Happenstance	[81]
	Roxanna Bennett	The Untranslatable I	[82]
	Stephen Collis	A History of the Theories of Rain
	Hoa Nguyen	A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure
	Rebecca Salazar	Sulphurtongue
2022	Annick MacAskill	Shadow Blight	[83]
	D. M. Bradford	Dream of No One But Myself	[84]
	Anne Carson	H of H Playbook
	Aaron Kreuter	Shifting Baseline Syndrome
	Avery Lake	Horrible Dance
2023	Hannah Green	Xanax Cowboy	[85]
	Robert Bringhurst	The Ridge	[86]
	Conor Kerr	Old Gods
	Amy Ching-Yan Lam	Baby Book
	Susan Musgrave	Exculpatory Lilies
2024	Chimwemwe Undi	Scientific Marvel	[87]
	Brandi Bird	The All + Flesh	[88]
	Bradley Peters	Sonnets from a Cell
	Bren Simmers	The Work
	Barbara Tran	Precedented Parroting