# NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry

This article lists the winners and nominees for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry. This award was first awarded in 2007 and since its conception, Nikki Giovanni holds the record for most wins in this category with three.

## Winners and nominees
### 2000s

Award winners and finalists, 2007–2009 :
| Year | Book | Author | Result |
| 2007 | Celebrations, Rituals of Peace and Prayer | Maya Angelou | Winner |
| 2007 | Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets & Emcees | DuEwa Frazier | Finalist |
| 2007 | Hoops | Major Jackson | Finalist |
| 2007 | Jazz | Walter Dean Myers | Finalist |
| 2007 | We Speak Your Names | Pearl Cleage | Finalist |
| 2008 | Acolytes: Poems | Nikki Giovanni | Winner |
| 2008 | Duende: Poems | Tracy K. Smith | Finalist |
| 2008 | Eloquence: Rhythm and Renaissance | Usi Ku | Finalist |
| 2008 | Quiver of Arrows | Carl Phillips | Finalist |
| 2008 | Selected Poems | Derek Walcott | Finalist |
| 2009 | — | — | — |

### 2010s

Award winners and finalists, 2010–2019 :
| Year | Book | Author | Result |
| 2010 | Bicycles | Nikki Giovanni | Winner |
| 2010 | Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry | Camille Dungy | Finalist |
| 2010 | Cooling Board: A Long-Playing Poem | Mitchell L. H. Douglas | Finalist |
| 2010 | Mixology | Adrian Matejka | Finalist |
| 2010 | Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall | Melba Joyce Boyd | Finalist |
| 2011 | 100 Best African-American Poems | Nikki Giovanni | Winner |
| 2011 | Hard Times Require Furious Dancing | Alice Walker | Finalist |
| 2011 | Holding Company | Major Jackson | Finalist |
| 2011 | Suck on the Marrow | Camille T. Dungy | Finalist |
| 2011 | White Egrets | Derek Walcott | Finalist |
| 2012 | Afro Clouds & Nappy Rain: The Curtis Brown Poems | James Golden | Winner |
| 2012 | Head Off & Split | Nikky Finney | Finalist |
| 2012 | Honoring Genius: The Narrative of Craft, Art, Kindness and Justice | Haki Madhubuti | Finalist |
| 2012 | Intimate Thoughts | Darrin Henson | Finalist |
| 2012 | Last Seen | Jacqueline Jones Lamon | Finalist |
| 2013 | Speak Water | Truth Thomas | Winner |
| 2013 | Hurrah's Nest | Arisa White | Finalist |
| 2013 | Maybe the Saddest Thing | Marcus Wicker | Finalist |
| 2013 | The Ground | Rowan Ricardo Phillips | Finalist |
| 2013 | Thrall | Natasha Trethewey | Finalist |
| 2014 | Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers | Frank X Walker | Winner |
| 2014 | Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid | Nikki Giovanni | Finalist |
| 2014 | Hum | Jamaal May | Finalist |
| 2014 | The Cineaste: Poems | A. Van Jordan | Finalist |
| 2014 | The Collected Poems of Ai | Ai | Finalist |
| 2015 | Citizen: An American Lyric | Claudia Rankine | Winner |
| 2015 | Digest | Gregory Pardlo | Finalist |
| 2015 | The New Testament | Jericho Brown | Finalist |
| 2015 | The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948–2013 | Derek Walcott | Finalist |
| 2015 | We Didn't Know Any Gangsters | Brian Gilmore | Finalist |
| 2016 | How to Be Drawn | Terrance Hayes | Winner |
| 2016 | Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude | Ross Gay | Finalist |
| 2016 | Reconnaissance | Carl Phillips | Finalist |
| 2016 | Redbone | Mahogany L. Browne | Finalist |
| 2016 | Wild Hundreds | Nate Marshall | Finalist |
| 2017 | Collected Poems: 1974–2004 | Rita Dove | Winner |
| 2017 | Counting Descent | Clint Smith | Finalist |
| 2017 | The Big Book of Exit Strategies | Jamaal May | Finalist |
| 2017 | The Sobbing School | Joshua Bennett | Finalist |
| 2017 | Thief in the Interior | Phillip B. Williams | Finalist |
| 2018 | Incendiary Art: Poems | Patricia Smith | Winner |
| 2018 | My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter | Aja Monet | Finalist |
| 2018 | Silencer | Marcus Wicker | Finalist |
| 2018 | The Drowning Boy's Guide to Water | Cameron Barnett | Finalist |
| 2018 | Wild Beauty: New and Selected Poems | Ntozake Shange | Finalist |
| 2019 | Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart | Alice Walker | Winner |
| 2019 | Confessions of a Barefaced Woman | Allison Elaine Joseph | Finalist |
| 2019 | Ghost, Like a Place | Iain Haley Pollock | Finalist |
| 2019 | Refuse | Julian Randall | Finalist |
| 2019 | The Gospel According to Wild Indigo | Cyrus Cassells | Finalist |

### 2020s

Award winners and finalists, 2020–present :
| Year | Book | Author | Result |
| 2020 | Felon: Poems | Reginald Dwayne Betts | Winner |
| 2020 | A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland | DaMaris B. Hill | Finalist |
| 2020 | Honeyfish | Lauren K. Alleyne | Finalist |
| 2020 | Mistress | Chet'la Sebree | Finalist |
| 2020 | The Tradition | Jericho Brown | Finalist |
| 2021 | The Age of Phillis | Honorée Fanonne Jeffers | Winner |
| 2021 | Homie | Danez Smith | Finalist |
| 2021 | Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry | John Murillo | Finalist |
| 2021 | Seeing the Body | Rachel Eliza Griffiths | Finalist |
| 2021 | Un-American | Hafizah Geter | Finalist |
| 2022 | Perfect Black | Crystal Wilkinson | Winner |
| 2022 | Playlist for the Apocalypse | Rita Dove | Finalist |
| 2022 | Such Color: New and Selected Poems | Tracy K. Smith | Finalist |
| 2022 | The Wild Fox of Yemen | Threa Almontaser | Finalist |
| 2022 | What Water Knows: Poems | Jacqueline Jones LaMon | Finalist |
| 2023 | To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness | Robin Coste Lewis | Winner |
| 2023 | Best Barbarian | Roger Reeves | Finalist |
| 2023 | Bluest Nude | Ama Codjoe | Finalist |
| 2023 | Concentrate | Courtney Faye Taylor | Finalist |
| 2023 | Muse Found in a Colonized Body | Yesenia Montilla | Finalist |
| 2024 | suddenly we | Evie Shockley | Winner |
| 2024 | Above Ground | Clint Smith | Finalist |
| 2024 | So to Speak | Terrance Hayes | Finalist |
| 2024 | The Ferguson Report: An Erasure | Nicole Sealey | Finalist |
| 2024 | Why Fathers Cry at Night | Kwame Alexander | Finalist |

## Multiple wins and nominations
### Wins
#### 3 wins

* Nikki Giovanni