Cirrus@Austlit

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 Keates has been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the 2011 Alec Bolton Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript; she was also shortlisted twice each for the Whitmore Press and Josephine Ulrick prizes.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'.