NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry

This article lists the winners and nominees for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry. This award was first awarded in 2007 and since its conception, Nikki Giovanni holds the record for most wins in this category with three.

Winners and nominees

2000s

Award winners and finalists, 2007–2009

Year	Book	Author	Result	Ref.
2007	Celebrations, Rituals of Peace and Prayer	Maya Angelou	Winner	[1]
	Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets & Emcees	DuEwa Frazier	Finalist	[1]
	Hoops	Major Jackson
	Jazz	Walter Dean Myers
	We Speak Your Names	Pearl Cleage
2008	Acolytes: Poems	Nikki Giovanni	Winner	[2]
	Duende: Poems	Tracy K. Smith	Finalist	[3]
	Eloquence: Rhythm and Renaissance	Usi Ku
	Quiver of Arrows	Carl Phillips
	Selected Poems	Derek Walcott
2009	—

2010s

Award winners and finalists, 2010–2019

Year	Book	Author	Result	Ref.
2010	Bicycles	Nikki Giovanni	Winner	[4]
	Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry	Camille Dungy	Finalist	[5]
	Cooling Board: A Long-Playing Poem	Mitchell L. H. Douglas
	Mixology	Adrian Matejka
	Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall	Melba Joyce Boyd
2011	100 Best African-American Poems	Nikki Giovanni	Winner	[6]
	Hard Times Require Furious Dancing	Alice Walker	Finalist
	Holding Company	Major Jackson
	Suck on the Marrow	Camille T. Dungy
	White Egrets	Derek Walcott
2012	Afro Clouds & Nappy Rain: The Curtis Brown Poems	James Golden	Winner	[7]
	Head Off & Split	Nikky Finney	Finalist	[7]
	Honoring Genius: The Narrative of Craft, Art, Kindness and Justice	Haki Madhubuti
	Intimate Thoughts	Darrin Henson
	Last Seen	Jacqueline Jones Lamon
2013	Speak Water	Truth Thomas	Winner	[8]
	Hurrah's Nest	Arisa White	Finalist	[8]
	Maybe the Saddest Thing	Marcus Wicker
	The Ground	Rowan Ricardo Phillips
	Thrall	Natasha Trethewey
2014	Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers	Frank X Walker	Winner	[9]
	Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid	Nikki Giovanni	Finalist	[9]
	Hum	Jamaal May
	The Cineaste: Poems	A. Van Jordan
	The Collected Poems of Ai	Ai
2015	Citizen: An American Lyric	Claudia Rankine	Winner	[10]
	Digest	Gregory Pardlo	Finalist	[10]
	The New Testament	Jericho Brown
	The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948–2013	Derek Walcott
	We Didn't Know Any Gangsters	Brian Gilmore
2016	How to Be Drawn	Terrance Hayes	Winner	[11][12]
	Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude	Ross Gay	Finalist	[11]
	Reconnaissance	Carl Phillips
	Redbone	Mahogany L. Browne
	Wild Hundreds	Nate Marshall
2017	Collected Poems: 1974–2004	Rita Dove	Winner	[13]
	Counting Descent	Clint Smith	Finalist	[13]
	The Big Book of Exit Strategies	Jamaal May
	The Sobbing School	Joshua Bennett
	Thief in the Interior	Phillip B. Williams
2018	Incendiary Art: Poems	Patricia Smith	Winner	[14]
	My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter	Aja Monet	Finalist	[14]
	Silencer	Marcus Wicker
	The Drowning Boy's Guide to Water	Cameron Barnett
	Wild Beauty: New and Selected Poems	Ntozake Shange
2019	Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart	Alice Walker	Winner	[15]
	Confessions of a Barefaced Woman	Allison Elaine Joseph	Finalist	[15]
	Ghost, Like a Place	Iain Haley Pollock
	Refuse	Julian Randall
	The Gospel According to Wild Indigo	Cyrus Cassells

2020s

Award winners and finalists, 2020–present

Year	Book	Author	Result	Ref.
2020	Felon: Poems	Reginald Dwayne Betts	Winner	[16]
	A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland	DaMaris B. Hill	Finalist	[16]
	Honeyfish	Lauren K. Alleyne
	Mistress	Chet'la Sebree
	The Tradition	Jericho Brown
2021	The Age of Phillis	Honorée Fanonne Jeffers	Winner	[17][18]
	Homie	Danez Smith	Finalist	[17][19]
	Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry	John Murillo
	Seeing the Body	Rachel Eliza Griffiths
	Un-American	Hafizah Geter
2022	Perfect Black	Crystal Wilkinson	Winner	[20][21]
	Playlist for the Apocalypse	Rita Dove	Finalist	[20]
	Such Color: New and Selected Poems	Tracy K. Smith
	The Wild Fox of Yemen	Threa Almontaser
	What Water Knows: Poems	Jacqueline Jones LaMon
2023	To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness	Robin Coste Lewis	Winner	[22]
	Best Barbarian	Roger Reeves	Finalist	[23]
	Bluest Nude	Ama Codjoe
	Concentrate	Courtney Faye Taylor
	Muse Found in a Colonized Body	Yesenia Montilla
2024	suddenly we	Evie Shockley	Winner	[24]
	Above Ground	Clint Smith	Finalist	[25]
	So to Speak	Terrance Hayes
	The Ferguson Report: An Erasure	Nicole Sealey
	Why Fathers Cry at Night	Kwame Alexander

Multiple wins and nominations

Wins

3 wins

• Nikki Giovanni

Nominations

4 nominations Nikki Giovanni 3 nominations Derek Walcott

2 nominations Camille T. Dungy Major Jackson Jamaal May Carl Phillips

References

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