2018
Ashley Toliver for Spectra (Coffee House Press)
Judge: Jason Bayani
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2017
Bao Phi for Thousand Star Hotel (Coffee House Press)
Judge: Sarah Menefee
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2016
Lauren Levin for The Braid (Krupskaya)
Judge: Melissa Mack
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2015
Orlando White for LETTERRS (Nightboat Books)
Judge: Patrick James Dunagan
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2014
Hollie Hardy for How to Take a Bullet and Other Survival Poems (Punk Hostage)
Judge: Mukta Sambrani
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2013
Alli Warren for Here Come the Warm Jets (City Lights Books)
Judge: Laura Moriarty
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2012
Stephen Ratcliffe for Selected Days (Counterpath)
Judge: anonymous
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2011
Wanda Coleman for The World Falls Away (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Judge: Brenda Coultas
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2010
Khaled Mattawa for Toqueville (New Issues/University of Michigan)
Judge: Ravi Shankar
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2009
Joseph Stroud for Of This World: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon)
Judge: Peter Weltner
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2008
Barbara Guest (awarded posthumously) for The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest (ed. Hadley Haden Guest, Wesleyan University Press)
Judge: Eileen Tabios
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2007
Noah Eli Gordon for Novel Pictorial Noise (Harper Books)
Judge: Sesshu Foster
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2006
Rigoberto Gonzalez for Other Fugitives and Other Strangers (Tupelo Press)
Judge: Bhanu Kapil
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2005
Dara Wier for Reverse Rapture (Verse Press)
Judge: Stephen Rodefer
•
2004
Adrienne Rich for The School Among the Ruins (W.W. Norton)
Judge: Mark McMorris
•
2003
Fanny Howe for Gone (University of California Press)
Judge: Larry Kearney
•
2002
Truong Tran for dust and conscience (Apogee Press)
Judge: Juan Felipe Herrera
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2001
Anselm Hollo for Notes on the Attractions and Possibilites of Existence: Selected Poems 1965-2000 (Coffee House Press)
Judge: Joanne Kyger
•
2000
Kevin Davies for Comp. (Edge Books)
Judge: Kevin Killian
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1999
Cole Swensen for Try (University of Iowa Press)
Judge: Elizabeth Robinson
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1998
Elaine Equi for Voice Over (Coffee House Press)
Judge: Thom Gunn
•
1997
Belle Waring for Dark Blonde (Sarabande Books)
Judge: Mark Doty
•
1996
Alicia Suskin Ostriker for The Crack in Everything (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Judge: Toi Derricotte
•
1995
Robert Wrigley for In the Bank of Beautiful Sins (Penguin Books)
Judge: James Tate
•
1994
Jane Hirschfield for The October Palace (HarperCollins)
Judge: Alison Deming
•
1993
Barbara Guest for Defensive Rapture (Sun & Moon)
Judge: Ann Lauterbach
•
1992
Julia Randall for The Path to Fairview: New and Selected Poems (Louisiana State University Press)
Judge: Marilyn Hacker
•
1991
C.D. Wright for String Light (University of Georgia Press)
Judge: Arthur Sze
•
1990
Carol Snow for Artist and Model (Atlantic Monthly Press)
Judge: Nathaniel Mackey
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1989
Luis J. Rodriguez for Poems Across the Pavement (Tía Chucha Press) and Adrian C. Louis for Fire Water World (West End Press)
Judge: Jimmy Santiago Baca
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1988
Leslie Scalapino for way (North Point Press)
Judge: Alice Notley
•
1987
Lyn Hejinian for My Life (Sun & Moon)
Judge: Michael Palmer
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1986
Yusef Komunyakaa for I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head (Wesleyan University Press)
Judge: David Henderson
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1985
Ron Silliman for Paradise (Burning Deck)
Judge: C.D. Wright
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1984
Jackson Mac Low for Bloomsday (Station Hill Press) and Diane Ward for Never Without One (Roof Books)
Judge: Barrett Watten
•
1983
Larry Eigner for Water/Places/A Time (Black Sparrow Press) and Laura Moriarty for Persia (Chance Additions)
Judge: Beverly Dahlen
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1982
Stephen Rodefer for Four Lectures (The Figures) and Gloria Frym for Back to Forth (The Figures)
Judge: Anselm Hollo
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1981
Alice Notley for How Spring Comes (Toothpaste Press) and John Hildebidle for The Old Chore (Alice James Books)
Judges: Kathleen Fraser and Jack Marshall
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1980
Sharon Olds for Satan Says (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Judges: Sandra Gilbert and Mark Linenthal
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