# Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry

The Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry is an annual literary award presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation to a gay-themed book of poetry by a male writer.
At the first two Lambda Literary Awards in 1989 and 1990, a single award for LGBT Poetry, irrespective of gender, was presented. Beginning with the 3rd Lambda Literary Awards in 1991, the poetry award was split into two separate awards for Gay Poetry and Lesbian Poetry. These separate awards have been presented continuously since then, with exception of the 20th Lambda Literary Awards in 2008, when a merged LGBTQ poetry award was again presented for that year only.

## Honorees

Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry winners and finalists :
| Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
| 1991 | Michael Lassell | Decade Dance | Winner | |
| 1991 | Francisco X. Alarcón | Body in Flames | Finalist | |
| 1991 | Mark Ameen | Buried Body | Finalist | |
| 1991 | Kenny Fries | Healing Notebooks | Finalist | |
| 1991 | James Broughton | Special Deliveries | Finalist | |
| 1992 | Assotto Saint (ed.) | The Road Before Us: 100 Gay Black Poets | Winner | |
| 1992 | Mark Doty | Bethlehem in Broad Daylight | Finalist | |
| 1992 | David Trinidad | Hand Over Heart | Finalist | |
| 1992 | Perry Brass | Sex-Charge | Finalist | |
| 1992 | John Ash | The Burnt Pages | Finalist | |
| 1993 | Edward Field | Counting Myself Lucky | Winner | |
| 1993 | Essex Hemphill | Ceremonies | Finalist | |
| 1993 | Rudy Kikel | Long Division | Finalist | |
| 1993 | Tim Dlugos | Strong Place | Finalist | |
| 1993 | Thom Gunn | The Man with Night Sweats | Finalist | |
| 1994 | Michael Klein | 1990 | Winner (tie) | |
| 1994 | James Schuyler | Collected Poems | Winner (tie) | |
| 1994 | Mark Doty | My Alexandria | Finalist | |
| 1994 | William Bory | Orpheus in his Underwear | Finalist | |
| 1994 | Carl Cook | Tranquil Lake of Love | Finalist | |
| 1995 | Thom Gunn | Collected Poems | Winner | |
| 1995 | Richard McCann | Ghost Letters | Finalist | |
| 1995 | Rafael Campo | The Other Man Was Me | Finalist | |
| 1995 | Paul Monette | West of Yesterday, East of Summer | Finalist | |
| 1995 | Assotto Saint | Wishing for Wings | Finalist | |
| 1996 | Mark Doty | Atlantis | Winner | |
| 1996 | David Laurents | Badboy Book of Erotic Verse | Finalist | |
| 1996 | Timothy Liu | Burnt Offerings | Finalist | |
| 1996 | Carl Phillips | Cortege | Finalist | |
| 1996 | James Merrill | Scattering of Salts | Finalist | |
| 1997 | Rafael Campo | What the Body Told | Winner | |
| 1997 | Kenny Fries | Anesthesia | Finalist | |
| 1997 | Reginald Shepherd | Angel, Interrupted | Finalist | |
| 1997 | Michael Lassell | Eros in Boystown | Finalist | |
| 1997 | Jaime Manrique | My Night With Federico Garcia Lorca | Finalist | |
| 1998 | Cyrus Cassells | Beautiful Signor | Winner | |
| 1998 | Justin Chin | Bite Hard | Finalist | |
| 1998 | Frank Bidart | Desire | Finalist | |
| 1998 | Tom Carey | Desire: Poems 1986-1996 | Finalist | |
| 1998 | James Broughton (ed. Jim Cory) | Packing Up for Paradise: Selected Poems 1946-1996 | Finalist | |
| 1999 | J. D. McClatchy | Ten Commandments | Winner | |
| 1999 | Michael Lassell | A Flame for the Touch That Matters | Finalist | |
| 1999 | Edward Field | A Frieze for a Temple of Love | Finalist | |
| 1999 | Timothy Liu | Say Goodnight | Finalist | |
| 1999 | Mark Doty | Sweet Machine | Finalist | |
| 2000 | Mark Wunderlich | The Anchorage | Winner (tie) | |
| 2000 | Richard Howard | Trappings | Winner (tie) | |
| 2000 | Rafael Campo | Diva | Finalist | |
| 2000 | Marvin K. White | Last Rights | Finalist | |
| 2000 | G. Winston James | Lyric | Finalist | |
| 2001 | Carl Phillips | Pastoral | Winner | |
| 2001 | Thom Gunn | Boss Cupid | Finalist | |
| 2001 | David Trinidad | Plasticville | Finalist | |
| 2001 | Michael Lassell and Elena Georgiou | The World in Us | Finalist | |
| 2001 | Timothy Liu | Word of Mouth | Finalist | |
| 2002 | Mark Doty | Source | Winner | |
| 2002 | Constantine Cavafy with Theoharis C. Theoharis (trans.) | Before Time Could Change Them | Finalist | |
| 2002 | Timothy Liu | Hard Evidence | Finalist | |
| 2002 | Justin Chin | Harmless Medicine | Finalist | |
| 2002 | J. D. McClatchy | Love Speaks Its Name | Finalist | |
| 2003 | J. D. McClatchy | Hazmat | Winner | |
| 2003 | Rafael Campo | Landscape with Human Figure | Finalist | |
| 2003 | Reginald Harris | Ten Tongues | Finalist | |
| 2003 | Krandall Kraus | The Christmas Poems | Finalist | |
| 2003 | David Groff | Theory of Devolution | Finalist | |
| 2004 | Mark Bibbins | Sky Lounge | Winner | |
| 2004 | Henri Cole | Middle Earth | Finalist | |
| 2004 | Reginald Shepherd | Otherhood: Poems | Finalist | |
| 2004 | Peter Pereira | Saying the World | Finalist | |
| 2004 | Rafael Campo | The Healing Art | Finalist | |
| 2005 | Luis Cernuda | Written in Water | Winner | |
| 2005 | D. A. Powell | Cocktails | Finalist | |
| 2005 | Marvin K. White | nothin’ ugly fly | Finalist | |
| 2005 | Carl Phillips | The Rest of Love | Finalist | |
| 2005 | Mark Wunderlich | Voluntary Servitude | Finalist | |
| 2006 | Richard Siken | Crush | Winner | |
| 2006 | Aaron Smith | Blue on Blue Ground | Finalist | |
| 2006 | Timothy Liu | For Dust Thou Art | Finalist | |
| 2006 | Mark Doty | School of the Arts | Finalist | |
| 2006 | Martin Pousson | Sugar | Finalist | |
| 2007 | Jim Elledge | A History of My Tattoo | Winner | |
| 2007 | Justin Chin | Gutted | Finalist | |
| 2007 | Rigoberto González | Other Fugitives & Other Strangers | Finalist | |
| 2007 | Jeffrey Conway | The Album That Changed My Life | Finalist | |
| 2007 | Dwaine Rieves | When the Eye Forms | Finalist | |
| 2008 | No award presented | No award presented | No award presented | No award presented |
| 2009 | Mark Doty | Fire to Fire | Winner (tie) | |
| 2009 | James Allen Hall | Now You're the Enemy | Winner (tie) | |
| 2009 | Jack Spicer (Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian, eds.) | My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer | Finalist | |
| 2009 | Jericho Brown | Please | Finalist | |
| 2009 | Rick Barot | Want | Finalist | |
| 2010 | Benjamin S. Grossberg | Sweet Core Orchard | Winner | |
| 2010 | Randall Mann | Breakfast with Thom Gunn | Finalist | |
| 2010 | Brent Goodman | The Brother Swimming Beneath Me | Finalist | |
| 2010 | Charles Jensen | The First Risk | Finalist | |
| 2010 | Tom Healy | What the Right Hand Knows | Finalist | |
| 2011 | Brian Teare | Pleasure | Winner | |
| 2011 | Greg Hewett | darkacre | Finalist | |
| 2011 | James Schuyler | Other Flowers: Uncollected Poems | Finalist | |
| 2011 | James L. White | The Salt Ecstasies | Finalist | |
| 2011 | Michael Klein | then, we were still living | Finalist | |
| 2012 | Tim Dlugos (David Trinidad, ed.) | A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos | Winner | |
| 2012 | David Trinidad | Dear Prudence: New and Selected Poems | Finalist | |
| 2012 | Carl Phillips | Double Shadow | Finalist | |
| 2012 | Thomas Meyer | Kintsugi | Finalist | |
| 2012 | Paul Legault | The Other Poems | Finalist | |
| 2013 | Stephen S. Mills | He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices | Winner | |
| 2013 | Aaron Smith | Appetite | Finalist | |
| 2013 | Richard Blanco | Looking for the Gulf Motel | Finalist | |
| 2013 | Patrick Donnelly | Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin | Finalist | |
| 2013 | Eduardo C. Corral | Slow Lightning | Finalist | |
| 2014 | Rigoberto González | Unpeopled Eden | Winner | |
| 2014 | Rafael Campo | Alternative Medicine | Finalist | |
| 2014 | David Groff | Clay | Finalist | |
| 2014 | Brian Teare | Companion Grasses | Finalist | |
| 2014 | Frank Bidart | Metaphysical Dog | Finalist | |
| 2014 | Angelo Nikolopoulos | Obscenely Yours | Finalist | |
| 2014 | Carl Phillips | Silverchest | Finalist | |
| 2014 | Randall Mann | Straight Razor | Finalist | |
| 2014 | Michael D. Snediker | The Apartment of Tragic Appliances | Finalist | |
| 2014 | Michael Klein | The Talking Day | Finalist | |
| 2015 | Danez Smith | [insert] boy | Winner | |
| 2015 | David J. Daniels | Clean | Finalist | |
| 2015 | Timothy Liu | Don’t Go Back to Sleep | Finalist | |
| 2015 | C. A. Conrad | ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness | Finalist | |
| 2015 | Saeed Jones | Prelude to Bruise | Finalist | |
| 2015 | Jericho Brown | The New Testament | Finalist | |
| 2015 | Michael Broder | This Life Now | Finalist | |
| 2015 | Hieu Minh Nguyen | This Way to the Sugar | Finalist | |
| 2016 | Nicholas Wong | Crevasse | Winner (tie) | |
| 2016 | Carl Phillips | Reconnaissance | Winner (tie) | |
| 2016 | Roberto F. Santiago | Angel Park | Finalist | |
| 2016 | Rickey Laurentiis | Boy with Thorn | Finalist | |
| 2016 | Francisco X. Alarcón | Canto Hondo/Deep Song | Finalist | |
| 2016 | Ben Ladouceur | Otter | Finalist | |
| 2016 | Jee Leong Koh | Steep Tea | Finalist | |
| 2016 | Ralph Hamilton | Teaching a Man to Unstick His Tail | Finalist | |
| 2017 | Phillip B. Williams | Thief in the Interior | Winner | |
| 2017 | Bryan Borland | DIG | Finalist | |
| 2017 | Ocean Vuong | Night Sky with Exit Wounds | Finalist | |
| 2017 | Aaron Smith | Primer | Finalist | |
| 2017 | Sjohnna McCray | Rapture | Finalist | |
| 2017 | C. Dale Young | The Halo | Finalist | |
| 2017 | Rajiv Mohabir | The Taxidermist’s Cut | Finalist | |
| 2017 | Derrick Austin | Trouble the Water | Finalist | |
| 2018 | C. A. Conrad | While Standing in Line for Death | Winner | |
| 2018 | Danez Smith | Don’t Call Us Dead | Finalist | |
| 2018 | Charif Shanahan | Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing | Finalist | |
| 2018 | Tommy Pico | Nature Poem | Finalist | |
| 2018 | Randall Mann | Proprietary | Finalist | |
| 2018 | Cedar Sigo | Royals | Finalist | |
| 2018 | Frederick Speers | So Far Afield | Finalist | |
| 2018 | Chen Chen | When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities | Finalist | |
| 2019 | Justin Phillip Reed | Indecency | Winner | |
| 2019 | Aldrin Valdez | ESL or You Weren’t Here | Finalist | |
| 2019 | Kazim Ali | Inquisition | Finalist | |
| 2019 | Tommy Pico | Junk | Finalist | |
| 2019 | Hieu Minh Nguyen | Not Here | Finalist | |
| 2019 | Jonah Mixon-Webster | Stereo(TYPE) | Finalist | |
| 2019 | Brane Mozetič | Unfinished Sketches of a Revolution (tr. Barbara Jursa) | Finalist | |
| 2019 | Carl Phillips | Wild Is the Wind | Finalist | |
| 2020 | Cyrée Jarelle Johnson | Slingshot | Winner | |
| 2020 | Brian Teare | Doomstead Days | Finalist | |
| 2020 | Jake Skeets | Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers | Finalist | |
| 2020 | Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué | Losing Miami | Finalist | |
| 2020 | Billy-Ray Belcourt | NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes from the Field | Finalist | |
| 2020 | Lawrence Lacambra Ypil | The Experiment of the Tropics | Finalist | |
| 2020 | Douglas Crane | The Revisionist & The Astropastorals | Finalist | |
| 2020 | Jericho Brown | The Tradition | Finalist | |
| 2021 | Eduardo C. Corral | Guillotine | Winner | |
| 2021 | Tommye Blount | Fantasia for the Man in Blue | Finalist | |
| 2021 | Romeo Oriogun | Sacrament of Bodies | Finalist | |
| 2021 | Ted Rees | Thanksgiving: A Poem | Finalist | |
| 2021 | Justin Phillip Reed | The Malevolent Volume | Finalist | |
| 2022 | John Keene | Punks: New & Selected Poems | Winner | |
| 2022 | Nicholas Wong | Besiege Me | Finalist | |
| 2022 | Michael Walsh | Creep Love | Finalist | |
| 2022 | Miguel Murphy | Shoreditch | Finalist | |
| 2022 | Derrick Austin | Tenderness | Finalist | |
| 2023 | Padraig Regan | Some Integrity | Winner | |
| 2023 | Saeed Jones | Alive at the End of the World | Finalist | |
| 2023 | Aldo Amparán | Brother Sleep | Finalist | |
| 2023 | Angelo Nikolopoulos | Pleasure | Finalist | |
| 2023 | Chris Tse | Super Model Minority | Finalist | |
| 2024 | Charif Shanahan | Trace Evidence | Winner | |
| 2024 | Paul Stephenson | Hard Drive | Finalist | |
| 2024 | Richard Blanco | Homeland of My Body: New and Selected Poems | | |
| 2024 | Emanuel Xavier | Love(ly) Child | | |
| 2024 | Grant Chemidlin | What We Lost in the Swamp | | |