AustLit logo
image of person or book cover 7883204220288548265.jpg
Carmen Keates thanks to Speed Poets
Carmen Leigh Keates Carmen Leigh Keates i(A57133 works by) (a.k.a. Carmen Lee Keates)
Born: Established: 1979 Brisbane, Queensland, ;
Gender: Female
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

BiographyHistory

Carmen Leigh Keates is a Brisbane poet whose works appear in many journals and anthologies, including Best Australian Poems 2013 (Black Inc). Keates has been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the 2011 Alec Bolton Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript; she was also shortlisted twice each for the Whitmore Press and Josephine Ulrick prizes.

In 2013, as part of research for her PhD at The University of Queensland, Keates travelled to Scandinavia to visit locations connected with the films of Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky; interest in this director’s work resulted in several poems, including 'Nostalghia' and 'Domenico’s Dog' which were first published in Australian Poetry Journal; both poems were subsequently translated into Finnish by Aki Räsänen and appear in the Helsinki-based literary journal Nuori Voima.

In late 2014, supported by a grant from Arts Queensland, Keates appeared at the Tasmanian Poetry Festival in Launceston and embarked on new work during a residency at the celebrated Kelly Street Writers’ Cottage in Hobart. Keates’s connection to Hobart began with her first visit to the city in June 2012, a visit that inspired the poem 'Cloud On Mount Wellington'.

Most Referenced Works

Personal Awards

2015 shortlisted The Whitmore Press Manuscript Prize
2014 shortlisted The Whitmore Press Manuscript Prize
2014 shortlisted Josephine Ulrick National Poetry Prize For the then-unpublished poem 'Burning Train'.

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Meteorites Geelong : Whitmore Press , 2016 10626071 2016 selected work poetry

'In this much-awaited first collection, Carmen Leigh Keates draws on her experiences of cinema and of travelling to regions in Scandinavia associated with iconic films -among them, Bergman's remote Swedish island of Fårö, and the Estonian capital Tallinn, where Tarkovsky filmed his science fiction masterpiece Stalker. In these poems, geographical, dream and film worlds collide with brilliant results, taking the reader on unexpected and unpredictable voyages.' (Publication summary)

2017 shortlisted Queensland Literary Awards Judith Wright Calanthe Award
Cloud on Mount Wellington i "On our ascent there is a shale-stone grotto", 2013 single work poetry
— Appears in: A Sudden Presence : Poetry from the Inaugural ACU Literature Prize 2013; (p. 29-31) Axon : Creative Explorations , March vol. 5 no. 1 2015;
2013 shortlisted ACU Prize for Poetry Inaugural prize.
Last amended 2 Dec 2015 09:18:30
Other mentions of "" in AustLit:
    X