Christopher "Kit" Kelen (born 17 December 1958 in

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

) 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

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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 an ...

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

Australia Council Creative Australia, formerly known as the Australia Council for the Arts and 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 announ ...

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 or UMAC) is a public comprehensive research university in Macau. The university campus is located in Hengqin, Hengqin Island, Zhuhai, Guangdong, on a piece of land leased to and under the jurisdiction of the Governmen ...

. As of 2018, he lived mainly on Worimi country on the NSW north coast. Kelen has published several book-length scholarly works about poetry, including ''Poetry, Consciousness and Community'' (2009), ''City of Poets'' (2009), ''Anthem Quality'' (2014) and ''Children, Animals and Poetry - Poetics and Ethics of Anthropomorphism'' (2022). 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. It is the oldest learned society in the Southern Hemisphere. The Society traces its ...

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) *''Book of Mother'' (2022) *''Bung Mazes'' (2022) Novels *''Punk's Travels'' (1980) *''A Wager with the Gods'' (2006)

References

1958 births 20th-century Australian novelists 21st-century Australian novelists Australian expatriates in China Australian expatriate writers 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 Australian people of Hungarian descent {{Australia-academic-bio-stub