His first collection of poems, "In the Blood", won the 1992 Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize, and his second book, "Cortège", was nominated for a 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award. His "Pastoral" won the 2001 Lambda Literary Award for Best Poetry. Phillips' work has been published in the "Yale Review", "Atlantic Monthly", "The New Yorker" and the "Paris Review". He was named a Witter Bynner Fellowshipin 1998 and in 2006, he was named the recipient of the Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets, given in memory of James Merrill.