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Awarded the Queen’s gold medal for poetry, only the fifth woman in 70 years to win it.

The death was announced todayof UA Fanthorpe, the sharp, witty poet equally admired by critics and the public. She was 79.

Many felt that in 1999 she should have become the first woman poet laureate, but she was beaten to the position by Andrew Motion, who retires this month and whose successor will be announced tomorrow. Motion later chaired a panel of judges which recommended her for the Queen’s gold medal for poetry. She was duly awarded the medal in 2003, only the fifth woman in 70 years to win it. She also became a CBE for services to literature in 2001, and in 1994 the first woman in 315 years to be nominated as professor of poetry at Oxford University. Her 1995 collection Safe as Houses is included on the A-level syllabus.

“She was an extraordinary character,” Richard Hendin, who had worked with her at Peterloo, said. “You might find yourself in some provincial English market town, and happen upon a member of the WI with a little stall selling marmalade, and that woman would look precisely like UA – but what she was selling was not marmalade. What you got from her was amazing poetry that quietly de-centred you and made you think.”

Her partner of 44 years, the academic and poet Rosie Bailey, said : “She was obviously incredibly gifted, quite exceptional. She had no side to her and she was very straight. She loved to laugh and loved writing to say what interested her and what mattered to her most.”

Fanthorpe published nothing until 1978, when she was almost 50. She was head of English at Cheltenham Ladies College when she decided on a radical change of career. Her time as a receptionist in a Bristol neurological hospital inspired her first collection, Side Effects. Her shrewd work immediately found both critical and popular acclaim, and she went on to publish eight more collections, all with Peterloo Poets, as well as audio-books and a volume of poems published by Penguin.

She was amused by the campaign to make her poet laureate – she was the Guardian’s top choice last time round – but resigned about never winning it, saying: “I never really thought I would. Andrew [Motion] has worked so hard – and I haven’t got that much energy left in me.”