Award-winning American poet and writer Donald Hall died on Saturday at the age of 89, AP reported. Hall’s daughter, Philippa Smith, confirmed that her father died at his home in Wilmot, New Hampshire, after being in hospice care for some time.

Hall began writing when he was just 12 years old. Over the course of a career that spanned more than seven decades, he wrote more than 40 books, half of which were works of poetry, NPR reported. He was the United States Poet Laureate for 2007-’08, and received the Robert Frost Medal in 1991 and the National Medal of Arts, the nation’s highest honour for artists, in 2010.

His style varied from haikus to blank verse, but he repeatedly returned to themes like his childhood, the death of his parents and grandparents and the loss of his second wife and fellow poet, Jane Kenyon.

“Much of my poetry has been elegiac, even morbid, beginning with laments over New Hampshire farms and extending to the death of my wife,” he wrote in the memoir, “Packing the Boxes”, published in 2008.

Former US President Barack Obama had said Hall’s writings “inspired Americans and enhanced the role of poetry in our national life”, according to NPR.