Archive Collection
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry Winners
1918–2026
The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry honours the finest collection of verse published by an American writer each year. Awarded since 1918, it has celebrated poets from Robert Frost and Sylvia Plath to Tracy K. Smith and Frank Bidart.
About the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
- Awarded by
- Columbia University
- First awarded
- 1917
- Country
- United States
- Winner receives
- $15,000
When it is announced
Winners and finalists in every category are announced together in early May. See the full announcement calendar.
How to enter
Anyone may enter a book, including the author, for a fee. Books published in the first half of the year are due by mid June and those published in the second half by mid October.
Official prize site · Checked August 2026. Dates move year to year, so confirm on the official site before entering.
| Year | Title & Author | Historical Context |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Ars Poeticas | The Pulitzer board gave Ars Poeticas the 2026 Prize for Poetry on May 4, 2026. The finalists were Douglas Kearney's I Imagine I Been Science Fiction… |
| 2025 | New and Selected Poems | New and Selected Poems won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; that year's finalists were Jennifer Chang's An Authentic Life and Danez Smith's Bluff:… |
| 2024 | Tripas: Poems | Tripas won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry; that year's other Pulitzer finalists were… |
| 2023 | Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007–2020 | Then the War won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; that year's finalists were Jay Hopler's Still Life and dg nanouk okpik's Blood Snow. The award… |
| 2022 | frank: sonnets | frank: sonnets won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, along with the PEN or Voelcker… |
| 2021 | Postcolonial Love Poem | Postcolonial Love Poem won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; that year's finalists were Mei-mei Berssenbrugge's A Treatise on Stars and Carolyn… |
| 2020 | The Tradition | The Tradition won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; that year's finalists were Dorianne Laux's Only as the Day Is Long and Mary Ruefle's Dunce. The… |
| 2019 | Be With | Be with won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award; that year's Pulitzer finalists were Jos Charles's… |
| 2018 | Half-light: Collected Poems 1965–2016 | This retrospective volume won the 2017 National Book Award for Poetry and the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; that year's Pulitzer finalists were… |
| 2017 | Olio | Olio won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; that year's finalists were Campbell McGrath's XX and Adrienne Rich's Collected Poems. The book also won… |
| 2016 | Ozone Journal | Ozone Journal won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; that year's finalists were Diane Seuss's Four Legged Girl and Elizabeth Willis's Alive. The… |
| 2015 | Digest | Digest won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; that year's finalists were Alan Shapiro's Reel to Reel and Arthur Sze's Compass Rose. The book also… |
| 2014 | 3 Sections | 3 Sections won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; that year's finalists were Morri Creech's The Sleep of Reason and Adrian Matejka's The Big Smoke.… |
| 2013 | Stag's Leap | Olds had been the most widely read serious American poet for two decades while the prize establishment kept its distance, her frankness dismissed as… |
| 2012 | Life on Mars | Life on Mars won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; that year's finalists were Forrest Gander's Core Samples from the World and Ron Padgett's How… |
| 2011 | The Best of It: New and Selected Poems | The Best of It won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; that year's finalists were Maurice Manning's The Common Man and Jean Valentine's Break the… |
| 2010 | Versed | Versed won the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award and, the following year, the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; that year's Pulitzer finalists… |
| 2009 | The Shadow of Sirius | The Shadow of Sirius won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Merwin's second, distinct from his first Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1971 for an… |
| 2008 | Failure | The 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry went to two books at once. The board named Failure joint winner with Robert Hass's Time and Materials, which had… |
| 2008 | Time and Materials | Time and Materials won the 2007 National Book Award for Poetry and then shared the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry with Philip Schultz's Failure, two… |
| 2007 | Native Guard | Native Guard won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; that year's finalists were Martín Espada's The Republic of Poetry and David Wojahn's… |
| 2006 | Late Wife | Late Wife won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; that year's finalists were Elizabeth Alexander's American Sublime and Dean Young's Elegy on Toy… |
| 2005 | Delights & Shadows | Delights & Shadows won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; that year's finalists were William Matthews's posthumous Search Party: Collected Poems and… |
| 2004 | Walking to Martha's Vineyard | Walking to Martha's Vineyard won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; that year's finalists were Henri Cole's Middle Earth and Heather McHugh's… |
| 2003 | Moy Sand and Gravel | Moy Sand and Gravel won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; that year's finalists were Frank Bidart's Music Like Dirt and J. D. McClatchy's Hazmat.… |
| 2002 | Practical Gods | The Pulitzer board gave Carl Dennis the 2002 Prize for Poetry for Practical Gods, over finalists Louise Glück's The Seven Ages and Franz Wright's The… |
| 2001 | Different Hours | The Pulitzer board gave Stephen Dunn the 2001 Prize for Poetry for Different Hours, over finalists Sydney Lea's Pursuit of a Wound and Bruce Smith's… |
| 2000 | Repair | The Pulitzer board gave C. K. Williams the 2000 Prize for Poetry for Repair, over finalists Rodney Jones's Elegy for the Southern Drawl and Adrienne… |
| 1999 | Blizzard of One | The Pulitzer board gave Mark Strand the 1999 Prize for Poetry for Blizzard of One, over finalists Alice Notley's Mysteries of Small Houses and… |
| 1998 | Black Zodiac | The Pulitzer board gave Charles Wright the 1998 Prize for Poetry for Black Zodiac, which also won that year's National Book Critics Circle Award,… |
| 1997 | Alive Together: New and Selected Poems | The Pulitzer board gave Lisel Mueller the 1997 Prize for Poetry for Alive Together, over finalists Robert Pinsky's The Figured Wheel and Laurie… |
| 1996 | The Dream of the Unified Field | The Pulitzer board gave Jorie Graham the 1996 Prize for Poetry for The Dream of the Unified Field, selected over finalists Donald Justice's New and… |
| 1995 | The Simple Truth | The Simple Truth won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, published by Knopf. Levine had taken the National Book Award four years earlier for What… |
| 1994 | Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems | The Pulitzer board gave Yusef Komunyakaa the 1994 Prize for Poetry for Neon Vernacular, which also won that year's Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award,… |
| 1993 | The Wild Iris | The Swedish Academy gave Louise Glück the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual… |
| 1992 | Selected Poems | The Pulitzer board gave James Tate the 1992 Prize for Poetry for Selected Poems, which had already won the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos… |
| 1991 | Near Changes | The Pulitzer board gave Mona Van Duyn the 1991 Prize for Poetry for Near Changes, over finalists Anthony Hecht's The Transparent Man and Gerald… |
| 1990 | The World Doesn't End | The Pulitzer board gave Charles Simic the 1990 Prize for Poetry for The World Doesn't End, over finalists Adrienne Rich's Time's Power and Paul… |
| 1989 | New and Collected Poems | The Pulitzer board gave Richard Wilbur the 1989 Prize for Poetry for New and Collected Poems, his second Pulitzer after Things of This World won in… |
| 1988 | Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems | The Pulitzer board gave William Meredith the 1988 Prize for Poetry for Partial Accounts, over finalists Lucille Clifton's combined volume Good Woman… |
| 1987 | Thomas and Beulah | The Pulitzer board gave Rita Dove the 1987 Prize for Poetry for Thomas and Beulah, making her the second African American poet to win the award,… |
| 1986 | The Flying Change | The Pulitzer board gave Henry Taylor the 1986 Prize for Poetry for The Flying Change, published by Louisiana State University Press, over finalists… |
| 1985 | Yin | The Pulitzer board gave Carolyn Kizer the 1985 Prize for Poetry for Yin, choosing it over finalists Robert Duncan's Ground Work and Charles Wright's… |
| 1984 | American Primitive | The Pulitzer board gave Mary Oliver the 1984 Prize for Poetry for American Primitive, her fifth collection, over finalists John Engels's Weather… |
| 1983 | Selected Poems | The Pulitzer board gave Galway Kinnell the 1983 Prize for Poetry for Selected Poems, over finalists Jack Gilbert's Monolithos and Charles Wright's… |
| 1982 | The Collected Poems | The Pulitzer board gave Sylvia Plath the 1982 Prize for Poetry for The Collected Poems, published the year before under Ted Hughes's editorship, over… |
| 1981 | The Morning of the Poem | The Pulitzer board gave Schuyler the 1981 Prize for Poetry for The Morning of the Poem, choosing it over two finalists, Richard Hugo's The Right… |
| 1980 | Selected Poems | Selected Poems won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; that year's finalists, the first the Pulitzer board published for this category, were Richard… |
| 1979 | Now and Then | Now and Then won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Warren's third Pulitzer and his second for poetry, after Promises: Poems 1954 to 1956 had… |
| 1978 | Collected Poems | Collected Poems won both the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the 1978 National Book Award, and the Bollingen Prize followed in 1981, a run of… |
| 1977 | Divine Comedies | Divine Comedies won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, recognizing a collection that turned out to be only the opening movement of something much… |
| 1976 | Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror | The collection achieved something no book had managed before: it won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Award, and the National Book… |
| 1975 | Turtle Island | Turtle Island won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and the recognition arrived at a moment when the environmental movement was gaining real… |
| 1974 | The Dolphin | The Dolphin won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Lowell's second, after Lord Weary's Castle had already won in 1947, and the prize did nothing to… |
| 1973 | Up Country | Up Country won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, recognizing a body of new and selected poems built around Kumin's deepening attachment to rural… |
| 1972 | Collected Poems | Collected Poems won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, recognizing the full arc from Wright's formal beginnings to the open, image centered style… |
| 1971 | The Carrier of Ladders | The Carrier of Ladders won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, recognizing the style Merwin had been developing for several books and would keep… |
| 1970 | Untitled Subjects | Untitled Subjects won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and the critic Harold Bloom later included it in his 1994 survey The Western Canon, an… |
| 1969 | Of Being Numerous | Of Being Numerous won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, an unusual recognition for a poet who had published almost nothing between the early 1930s… |
| 1968 | The Hard Hours | The Hard Hours won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, recognizing a book that had taken Hecht more than two decades to write after the war… |
| 1967 | Live or Die | Live or Die won the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, confirming confessional poetry, once dismissed by some critics as oversharing, as a mode the… |
| 1966 | Selected Poems | Selected Poems 1930 to 1965 won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, honoring a body of work built over three and a half decades rather than a single… |
| 1965 | 77 Dream Songs | 77 Dream Songs won the 1965 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, recognizing only the first installment of a project Berryman was still writing; he published a… |
| 1964 | At the End of the Open Road | At the End of the Open Road won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, recognizing a poet who had left formal verse behind for a looser, more skeptical… |
| 1963 | Pictures from Brueghel | Williams died on March 4, 1963, at his home in Rutherford, New Jersey, at seventy nine, after years of declining health following a heart attack in… |
| 1962 | Poems | Poems won both the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award for Poetry the same year, an unusual double for a poet's first book and… |
| 1961 | Times Three: Selected Verse From Three Decades | Times Three won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, making McGinley the first poet honored specifically for a collection of light verse, an unusual… |
| 1960 | Heart's Needle | The Pulitzer board gave W. D. Snodgrass the 1960 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Heart's Needle, his 1959 debut collection. Beyond the Pulitzer, the… |
| 1959 | Selected Poems 1928–1958 | The Pulitzer board gave Stanley Kunitz the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Selected Poems 1928 to 1958, a book that, before Little, Brown finally… |
| 1958 | Promises: Poems 1954–1956 | The Pulitzer board gave Robert Penn Warren the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Promises, published in 1957, which also won that year's National… |
| 1957 | Things of This World | The Pulitzer board gave Richard Wilbur the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Things of This World, which also won the National Book Award that same… |
| 1956 | Poems: North & South - A Cold Spring | The Pulitzer board gave Elizabeth Bishop the 1956 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for this combined volume, gathering her 1946 debut with the new poems of… |
| 1955 | Collected Poems | The Pulitzer board gave Wallace Stevens the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Collected Poems, published in 1954, shortly before his death that… |
| 1954 | The Waking | The Pulitzer board gave Theodore Roethke the 1954 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Waking, published in 1953. Roethke had by then spent several… |
| 1953 | Collected Poems 1917–1952 | The Pulitzer board gave Archibald MacLeish the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Collected Poems 1917 to 1952, his second Pulitzer for poetry after… |
| 1952 | Collected Poems | The Pulitzer board gave Marianne Moore the 1952 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Collected Poems, published in 1951, which also won the National Book… |
| 1951 | Complete Poems | The Pulitzer board gave Carl Sandburg the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Complete Poems, published in 1950. It was Sandburg's second Pulitzer… |
| 1950 | Annie Allen | The Pulitzer board gave Gwendolyn Brooks the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Annie Allen, published by Harper and Brothers on October 1, 1949,… |
| 1949 | Terror and Decorum | The Pulitzer board gave Peter Viereck the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Terror and Decorum, published in 1948. The award arrived just as Viereck… |
| 1948 | The Age of Anxiety | The Pulitzer board gave W. H. Auden the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Age of Anxiety, published in the United States in 1947, a year ahead… |
| 1947 | Lord Weary's Castle | The Pulitzer board gave Robert Lowell the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Lord Weary's Castle, published the previous year, when Lowell was only… |
| 1946 | No Award | The Pulitzer board gave no poetry prize in 1946, one of the few years since the award began in 1922 that it has gone unawarded. |
| 1945 | V-Letter and Other Poems | The Pulitzer board gave Karl Shapiro the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for V-Letter and Other Poems, published in 1944 while Shapiro was still… |
| 1944 | Western Star | The Pulitzer board gave Stephen Vincent Benét the 1944 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Western Star, awarded posthumously the year after his death in… |
| 1943 | A Witness Tree | The Pulitzer board gave Robert Frost the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for A Witness Tree, published by Henry Holt and Company the previous year. It… |
| 1942 | The Dust Which Is God | The Pulitzer board gave William Rose Benét the 1942 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Dust Which Is God, published in 1941. The award recognized a… |
| 1941 | Sunderland Capture | The Pulitzer board gave Leonard Bacon the 1941 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Sunderland Capture, published the previous year. Bacon had spent nearly… |
| 1940 | Collected Poems | The Pulitzer board gave Mark Van Doren the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for this Collected Poems, recognizing sixteen years of published work… |
| 1939 | Selected Poems | John Gould Fletcher won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for this Selected Poems, becoming the first poet from the American South to receive the… |
| 1938 | Cold Morning Sky | Marya Zaturenska won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Cold Morning Sky. Zaturenska was born in Kyiv in 1902 and immigrated to the United States… |
| 1937 | A Further Range | Robert Frost won his third Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1937 for A Further Range, six years after his second, for Collected Poems in 1931, and six… |
| 1936 | Strange Holiness | Robert P. Tristram Coffin won the 1936 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Strange Holiness. Coffin taught English at Wells College and later held the… |
| 1935 | Bright Ambush | Audrey Wurdemann won the 1935 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Bright Ambush at age twenty four, the youngest poet to win the award up to that point.… |
| 1934 | Collected Verse | Robert Hillyer won the 1934 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Verse. Hillyer joined the Harvard faculty in 1919 and taught there into the… |
| 1933 | Conquistador | Archibald MacLeish won the 1933 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Conquistador, published the previous year, the first of three Pulitzer Prizes across… |
| 1932 | The Flowering Stone | George Dillon won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Flowering Stone at twenty five, making him one of the youngest winners in the prize's… |
| 1931 | Collected Poems | Robert Frost won his second Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1931 for this Collected Poems, seven years after his first, for New Hampshire in 1924, and… |
| 1930 | Selected Poems | Conrad Aiken won the 1930 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for this Selected Poems. Aiken had studied at Harvard alongside T. S. Eliot, editing the Harvard… |
| 1929 | John Brown's Body | Stephen Vincent Benét won the 1929 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for John Brown's Body, published the previous year. The poem became one of the most… |
| 1928 | Tristram | Edwin Arlington Robinson won his third Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1928 for Tristram, completing a run that had begun with Collected Poems in 1922… |
| 1927 | Fiddler's Farewell | Leonora Speyer won the 1927 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Fiddler's Farewell. Speyer had built her literary reputation relatively late, after an… |
| 1926 | What's O'Clock | Amy Lowell died of a cerebral hemorrhage on May 12, 1925, at age fifty one, and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for What's O'Clock was awarded to her… |
| 1925 | The Man Who Died Twice | Edwin Arlington Robinson won his second Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1925 for The Man Who Died Twice, three years after his first, for Collected… |
| 1924 | New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes | Robert Frost won the 1924 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for New Hampshire, published in 1923, the first of four poetry Pulitzers he would eventually win,… |
| 1923 | The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver | Edna St. Vincent Millay's 1923 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry made her the first woman to win the award since poetry became an official Pulitzer category… |
| 1922 | Collected Poems | Edwin Arlington Robinson won the first official Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, awarded in 1922 for the Collected Poems he had published the previous… |
| 1919 | The Old Road to Paradise | Joseph Pulitzer's will said nothing about poetry. For the 1918 and 1919 cycles the Poetry Society of America funded a special citation, called at the… |
| 1919 | Cornhuskers | Carl Sandburg shared a special citation for Cornhuskers with Margaret Widdemer's The Old Road to Paradise in 1919, funded by the same Poetry Society… |
| 1918 | Love Songs | Sara Teasdale won a special citation in 1918 for Love Songs, funded by a grant from The Poetry Society and administered at the time as the Columbia… |