# 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.

## Winners and nominees
### 1980s

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

### 1990s

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

### 2000s

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

### 2010s

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

### 2020s

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