`Birthday Letters' up for Eliot prize

London - The late British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes's verse letters to his former wife Sylvia Plath have been shortlisted for …

London - The late British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes's verse letters to his former wife Sylvia Plath have been shortlisted for another poetry prize to be awarded today.

The Birthday Letters is among 10 collections in the running for the £5,000 T.S. Eliot Prize. It won the £10,000 Forward Poetry Prize just before Hughes's death from cancer last month, and is shortlisted for the Whitbread poetry prize to be awarded on Wednesday.

Other shortlisted poets include Glyn Maxwell, Sarah Corbett and Jackie Kay. T.S. Eliot's widow, Valerie, will present the prize at the British Museum.

With The Birthday Letters, which was published last year, Hughes broke a lifelong silence about his poet wife Plath, who committed suicide.