Pascale Petit (poet) Father" were all shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. Three books were books of the year in "The Observer", "The Times Literary Supplement" and "The Independent". "What the Water Gave Me" was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year. Petit has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize and in 2001 she was one of ten poets commissioned by BBC Radio 4 to write a poem for National Poetry Day. In 2004, she was selected by the Poetry Book Society as one of the Next Generation Poets. "The Zoo Father" is published in a bilingual edition in Mexico and
T. S. Eliot Eliot, his friend Robert Sencourt comments that the young Eliot "would often curl up in the window-seat behind an enormous book, setting the drug of dreams against the pain of living." Secondly, Eliot credited his hometown with fuelling his literary vision: "It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London."