COPENHAGEN Poet Inger Christensen, considered one of Denmarks greatest authors and long mentioned among probable candidates for a Nobel Literature prize, has died at the age of 73, her publisher said Monday.

She died on Friday, January 2, Gyldendal publishing house spokeswoman Gitte Larsen told AFP, without detailing the cause or place of Christensens death.

Born on January 16, 1935 in the western Danish town of Vejle, Christensen published her first collection of poems, Lys (Light) in 1962, followed by Graes (Grass) a year later.

She then went on to write a large suite of poems called Det (It), published in 1969, which is considered her first major work.

Christensen then turned to essays, novels and childrens books for a number of years before returning to poetry with Alfabet” (Alphabet) in 1981 and the 1991 Sommerfugledalen (The Butterfly Valley), which critics have hailed as her masterpiece.

She extracted from the sterile and often monotone world of systematic poetry a unique richness of intonations, using an impersonal system to create highly personal poetry, Copenhagen University professor Erik Nielsen once said to describe her.

Inger Christensen is difficult to nail down but no one doubts her presence, because she emits an almost unwavering force, he added.

A member of the Royal Danish Academy since 1978, the European Academy of Poetry since 1996 and the Akademie der Kuenste (Academy of the Arts) in Berlin since 2001, Christensen received numerous literary awards, including the 1994 Swedish Academys Nordic Prize, known as the “little Nobel” and the Grand Prix at the International Poetry Biennal in 1995.