Professor Christopher (Kit) Kelen (born 17 December 1958 in

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

) is an Australian academic, writer, and artist. He is the younger son of Hungarian-born writer Stephen Kelen. Kelen is the author of fourteen volumes of poetry and two novels. He has been published widely since the mid-1970s and in 1988 won an ABA/

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Television ...

bicentennial award with his poem "Views from Pinchgut".Kelen, Christopher
''AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource'', 20 November 2007. In 1992, "The Naming of the Harbour and the Trees" won an

Anne Elder Award The Anne Elder Trust Fund Award for poetry was administered by the Victorian branch of the Fellowship of Australian Writers from its establishment in 1976 until 2017. From 2018 the award has been administered by Australian Poetry. It is awarded ann ...

. TextJournal Oct. 98
/ref> Kelen was Writer-in-Residence for the

Australia Council The Australia Council for the Arts, commonly known as the Australia Council, is the country's official arts council, serving as an arts funding and advisory body for the Government of Australia. The council was announced in 1967 as the Austra ...

at the B. R. Whiting Library in

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in 1996. For many years, Kelen taught Creative Writing and Literature at the

University of Macau The University of Macau (UM; Portuguese: ''Universidade de Macau'', Chinese: 澳門大學) is an internationalised public comprehensive university in Macau. The UM campus is located in the east of Hengqin Island, Guangdong province in Mainland ...

. As of 2020, he lived in Sydney. Kelen has published several book-length scholarly works about poetry, including ''Poetry, Consciousness and Community'' (2009), ''City of Poets'' (2009), and ''Anthem Quality'' (2014). Kelen was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of New South Wales The Royal Society of New South Wales is a learned society based in Sydney, Australia. The Governor of New South Wales is the vice-regal patron of the Society. The Society was established as the Philosophical Society of Australasia on 27 June ...

in 2019.

Bibliography

Poetry *''The Naming of the Harbour and the Trees'' (1992) *''Green Lizard Manifesto'' (1997) *''Möbius'' (1998) *''Republics'' (2000) *''New Territories'' (2003) *''Eight Days in Lhasa'' (2006) *''A Map of the Seasons'' (2006) *''Dredging the Delta'' (2007) *''After Meng Jiao'' (2008) *''China Years'' (2011) *''Pictures of Nothing at All'' (2014) *''Scavengers' Season'' (2014) *''As to the Ladders of Whichway'' (2015) *''A Pocket Kit (2)'' (2015) *''Poor Man's Coat'' (2018) Novels *''Punk's Travels'' (1980) *''A Wager with the Gods'' (2006)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kelen, Christopher 1958 births 20th-century Australian novelists 21st-century Australian novelists Australian expatriates in China Australian male novelists Australian poets University of Sydney alumni Living people Western Sydney University alumni Australian male poets 20th-century Australian male writers 21st-century Australian male writers Fellows of the Royal Society of New South Wales