The poet Inger Christensen (born 1935), whose work — lyrical, philosophical, self-referential and exquisitely mathematical — was a cornerstone of modern Scandinavian poetry, died after a short illness on Jan. 2 in Copenhagen. She was 73. Widely regarded as Denmark’s most eminent poet, Inger Christensen was routinely mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Christensen was the foremost experimentalist of her generation. Central theme in her work was the distance between language and experience, reality and words and her poems are known in particular for being organized along carefully worked-out geometrical lines. Inger Christensen received numerous awards, including the Nordic Prize of the (1994), Der österreichische Staatspreis für Literature (1994), Grand Prix des Biennales Internationales de Poésie (1995), and Edvard Pedersens Biblioteksfonds Forfatterpris in 1978 Inger Christensen was appointed in the Danish Academy and in 1995 she became a member of Académie Européenne de Poésie.