POETRY Book Society Choice. Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, 1998 Yorkshireman now living in London. British poet Ken Smith’s new collection, Wild Root, was shortlisted for the 1998 T.S. Eliot Prize. In it we find more journeys, more borders, more strange encounters, more transactions in the trade of languages. Here his wanderings take him further and further out, among the wastelands of Eastern Europe after Communism, and again to North America, where his as-if counterpart Eddie lives his imaginary lives, among other kinless wanderers. East and West, the distances merge into each other, but on the way meet Suleyman the Magnificent. Meet Jeremiah Bethia Robinson, a man that was never any fun at breakfast. Meet the Hat. (View image)