Governor General's Literary Awards
Poetry

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The Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry is awarded annually for a book written by a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident of Canada. For more information, visit the official site.

See also: Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry (French)

indicates a review is available for that book

2014

  • Arleen Paré – Lake of Two Mountains

Also shortlisted:

  • Sadiqa de Meijer – Leaving Howe Island
  • Julie Joosten – Light Light
  • Christopher Levenson – Night Vision
  • Garth Martens – Prologue for the Age of Consequence

2013

  • Katherena Vermette – North End Love Songs

Also shortlisted:

  • Austin Clarke – Where The Sun Shines Best
  • Adam Dickinson – The Polymers
  • Don Domanski – Bite Down Little Whisper
  • Russell Thornton – Birds, Metals, Stones & Rain

2012

  • Julie Bruck – Monkey Ranch

Also shortlisted:

  • David McGimpsey – Li'l Bastard
  • A. F. Moritz – The New Measures
  • Lisa Pasold – Any Bright Horse
  • James Pollock – Sailing to Babylon

2011

  • Phil Hall – Killdeer

Also shortlisted:

  • Michael Boughn – Cosmographia
  • Kate Eichhorn – Fieldnotes, A Forensic
  • Garry Thomas Morse – Discovery Passages
  • Susan Musgrave – Origami Dove

2010

  • Richard Greene – Boxing the Compass

Also shortlisted:

  • Michael Harris – Circus
  • Daryl Hine – &: A Serial Poem
  • Sandy Pool – Exploding into Night
  • Melanie Siebert – Deepwater Vee

2009

Also shortlisted:

  • David W. McFadden – Be Calm, Honey
  • Philip Kevin Paul – Little Hunger
  • Sina Queyras – Expressway
  • Carmine Starnino – This Way Out

2008

  • Jacob Scheier – More to Keep Us Warm

Also shortlisted:

  • Weyman Chan – Noise from the Laundry
  • A.F. Moritz – The Sentinel
  • Sachiko Murakami – The Invisibility Exhibit
  • Ruth Roach Pierson – Aide-Mémoire

2007

  • Don Domanski – All Our Wonder Unavenged

Also shortlisted:

  • Margaret Atwood – The Door: Poems
  • Brian Henderson – Nerve Language
  • Dennis Lee – Yesno: Poems
  • Rob Winger – Muybridge's Horse: A Poem in Three Phases

2006

  • John Pass – Stumbling in the Bloom

Also shortlisted:

  • Ken Babstock – Airstream Land Yacht
  • Elizabeth Bachinsky – Home of Sudden Service
  • Dionne Brand – Inventory
  • Sharon Thesen – The Good Bacteria

2005

  • Anne Compton – Processional

Also shortlisted:

  • Barry Dempster – The Burning Alphabet
  • Erin Mouré – Little theatres
  • W.H. New – Underwood Log
  • Olive Senior – Over the Roofs of the World

2004

  • Roo Borson – Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida

Also shortlisted:

  • Tim Bowling – The Memory Orchard
  • David Manicom – The Burning Eaves
  • John Terpstra – Disarmament
  • Jan Zwicky – Robinson's Crossing

2003

  • Tim Lilburn – Kill-site

Also shortlisted:

  • Tim Bowling – The Witness Ghost
  • Evan Jones – Nothing Fell Today But Rain
  • Anne Simpson – Loop
  • Tom Wayman – My Father's Cup

2002

  • Roy Miki – Surrender

Also shortlisted:

  • Tammy Armstrong – Bogman's Music
  • Colin Browne – Ground Water
  • Kathy Mac – Nail Builders Plan for Strength and Growth
  • Erin Mouré – O Cidadán

2001

Also shortlisted:

  • Anne Carson – Men in the Off Hours
  • Phil Hall – Trouble Sleeping
  • Robert Kroetsch – The Hornbooks of Rita K.
  • Steve McCaffery – Seven Pages Missing

2000

  • Don McKay – Another Gravity

Also shortlisted:

  • George Bowering – His Life
  • A.F. Moritz – Rest on the Flight into Egypt
  • John Pass – Water Stair
  • Patricia Young – Ruin and Beauty

1999

  • Jan Zwicky – Songs for Relinquishing the Earth

Also shortlisted:

  • Lynn Davies – The Bridge that Carries the Road
  • Susan Goyette – The True Names of Birds
  • Richard Harrison – Big Breath of a Wish
  • Terence Young – The Island in Winter

1998

  • Stephanie Bolster – White Stone: The Alice Poems

Also shortlisted:

  • Louise Bernice Halfe – Blue Marrow
  • Michael Ondaatje – Handwriting
  • Lisa Robertson – Debbie: An Epic
  • Kathy Shaidle – Lobotomy Magnificat

1997

  • Dionne Brand – Land to Light On

Also shortlisted:

1996

  • E.D. Blodgett – Apostrophes: Woman at a Piano

Also shortlisted:

  • Elizabeth Brewster – Footnotes to the Book of Job
  • Crispin Elsted – Climate and the Affections
  • Charles Lillard – Shadow Weather
  • Erin Mouré – Search Procedures

1995

  • Anne Szumigalski – Voice

Also shortlisted:

1994

Also shortlisted:

  • Robin Blaser – The Holy Forest
  • Polly Fleck – The Chinese Execution
  • Monty Reid – Dog Sleeps

1993

  • Don Coles – Forests of the Medieval World

Also shortlisted:

  • Claire Harris – Drawing Down a Daughter
  • Monty Reid – Crawlspace: New and Selected Poems
  • Douglas Burnet Smith – Voices from a Farther Room
  • Patricia Young – More Watery Still

1992

  • Lorna Crozier – Inventing the Hawk

Also shortlisted:

  • Evelyn Lau – Oedipal Dreams
  • Laura Lush – Hometown
  • Steve McCaffery – Theory of Sediment
  • Kathleen McCracken – Blue Light, Bay and College

1991

  • Don McKay – Night Field

Also shortlisted:

  • Don Domanski – Wolf-Ladder
  • Judith Fitzgerald – Rapturous Chronicles
  • Patrick Lane – Mortal Remains
  • Anne Michaels – Miner's Pond

1990

Also shortlisted:

  • Dionne Brand – No Language Is Neutral
  • Patrick Lane – Winter

1989

  • Heather Spears – The Word for Sand

Also shortlisted:

  • Tim Lilburn – Tourist to Ecstasy
  • Stephen Scobie – Dunino

1988

  • Erin Mouré – Furious

Also shortlisted:

  • Lorna Crozier – Angels of Flesh, Angels of Silence
  • Christopher Dewdney – Radiant Inventory
  • David McFadden – Gypsy Guitar
  • Peter Dale Scott – Coming to Jakarta

1987

  • Gwendolyn MacEwen – Afterworlds

Also shortlisted:

  • Di Brandt – Questions I Asked My Mother
  • Roy Kiyooka – Pear Tree Pomes
  • Sharon Thesen – The Beginning of the Long Dash

1986

  • Al Purdy – The Collected Poems of Al Purdy

Also shortlisted:

  • Christopher Dewdney – The Immaculate Perception
  • John Newlove – The Night the Dog Smiled

1985

  • Fred Wah – Waiting for Saskatchewan

Also shortlisted:

  • Lorna Crozier – The Garden Going on Without Us
  • Richard Lush – A Manual for Lying Down
  • Anne Szumigalski – Instar

1984

  • Paulette Jiles – Celestial Navigation

Also shortlisted:

  • Roo Borson – The Whole Night, Coming Home
  • Marilyn Bowering – The Sunday before Winter
  • David McFadden – The Art of Darkness
  • Sharon Thesen – Confabulations
  • Peter van Toorn – Mountain Tea

1983

  • David Donnell – Settlements

Also shortlisted:

  • Christopher Dewdney – Predators of the Adoration: Selected Poems 1972-82
  • Don McKay – Birding, or Desire
  • Anne Szumigalski – Doctrine of Signatures

1982

  • Phyllis Webb – The Vision Tree: Selected Poems

Also shortlisted:

  • Robert Bringhurst – The Beauty of the Weapons: Selected Poems 1972-1982
  • Barry Dempster – Fables for Isolated Men
  • Diane Keating – No Birds or Flowers

1981

  • F.R. Scott – The Collected Poems of F.R. Scott

Also shortlisted:

  • Alfred Bailey – Miramichi Lightning: Collected Poems
  • Barry McKinnon – The The

1980

  • Stephen Scobie – McAlmon's Chinese Opera

Also shortlisted:

  • Douglas Lochhead – High March Road

1979

Also shortlisted:

  • Erin Mouré – Empire, York Street
  • Susan Musgrave – A Man to Marry, a Man to Bury

1978

  • Patrick Lane – Poems New and Selected

1976

  • Joe Rosenblatt – Top Soil

1975

1974

  • Ralph Gustafson – Fire on Stone

1973

  • Miriam Mandel – Lions at her Face

1972

  • Dennis Lee – Civil Elegies and Other Poems
  • John Newlove – Lies

1971

  • John Glassco – Selected Poems

1970

  • bpNichol – Still Water
  • bpNichol – The True Eventual Story of Billy The Kid
  • bpNichol – Beach Head
  • bpNichol – The cosmic chef: an evening of concrete
  • Michael Ondaatje – The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

1969

  • George Bowering – Rocky Mountain Foot
  • George Bowering – The Gangs of Kosmos
  • Gwendolyn MacEwen – The Shadow-Maker

1968

1967

  • Eli Mandel – An Idiot Joy
  • Alden Nowlan – Bread, Wine and Salt

1966

1965

1964

  • Raymond Souster – The Colour of the Times

1962

  • James Reaney – Twelve Letters to a Small Town

1961

  • Robert Finch – Acis in Oxford

1960

  • Margaret Avison – Winter Sun

1959

  • Irving Layton – Red Carpet for the Sun

1958

  • James Reaney – A Suit of Nettles

1957

  • Jay Macpherson – The Boatman

1956

  • Robert A.D. Ford – A Window on the North

1955

  • Wilfred Watson – Friday's Child

1954

1953

  • Douglas LePan – The Net and the Sword

1952

  • E.J. Pratt – Towards the Last Spike

1951

1950

  • James Wreford Watson – Of Time and the Lover
  • Margaret Avison – Winter Sun

1949

  • James Reaney – The Red Heart

1948

  • A.M. Klein – The Rocking Chair and Other Poems

1947

  • Dorothy Livesay – Poems for People

1946

  • Robert Finch – Poems

1945

  • Earle Birney – Now is Time

1944

  • Dorothy Livesay – Day and Night

1943

  • A.J.M. Smith – News of the Phoenix

1942

  • Earle Birney – David and Other Poems

1941

  • Anne Marriott – Calling Adventurers

1940

  • E.J. Pratt – Brébeuf and His Brethren

1939

  • Arthur S. Bourinot – Under the Sun

1938

  • Kenneth Leslie – By Stubborn Stars

1937

  • E.J. Pratt – The Fable of the Goats