Prize-winning poet Eberhart dies

Prize-winning poet Eberhart pictured in 1977

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Richard Eberhart has died at his home in New Hampshire, US at the age of 101.

In a career that spanned decades, Eberhart won a string of awards for his poetry, including the Pulitzer in 1966 for an anthology of his work.

Former colleague and fellow academic Jay Parini said Eberhart's work makes up "part of the permanent treasury of American poetry".

Eberhart was known for encouraging young poets to develop their skills.

He mentored several at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire where he taught for 30 years of his career, and was the state's poet laureate from 1979-84.

'Milestones'

The Minnesota-born writer, who studied at St John's College, Cambridge, once said that "poems are in a way spells against death".

"They are milestones to see where you were then to where you are now," he added.

In 1977 when accepting a National Book Award, he called poetry in the US "a natural energy source of our country".

"It has no energy crisis, possessing a potential that will last as long as the country," added the writer.

In the 1930s, Eberhart was tutor to the King of Thailand's son, and entered Harvard as a graduate student before joining the US Naval Reserve during World War II.