The American poet, essayist and feminist Adrienne Rich has died at the age of 82. Rich died on Tuesday at her home in Santa Cruz, California, her daughter-in-law Diana Horowitz said. Horowitz said Rich succumbed to complications from rheumatoid arthritis, from which she suffered for many years. Rich was perhaps best known for her politically-charged work during the Vietnam war era. Her 1973 collection, Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972," won the National Book Award. Later in life, in 1997, she created a stir by refusing the National Medal of Arts, the highest honour awarded by the US government to artists and artistic patrons, on political grounds. "I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House," she wrote, "because the very meaning of art as I understand it is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration."