Chinese, Braille poetry plans win funding

Two projects that will see poetry translated into Braille and Chinese are among the 2023 fellowships awarded by the State Library of Victoria.

(IN)visible Library, a project by artist Leisa Shelton and writer Marisa Sporsaro, will look at new ways to present the library's Braille collection.

They will invite people to read out their favourite poem, which the pair will record in real time in two ways.

While Shelton will hand-write the poem, Sporsaro, who is vision impaired, will transcribe the poem using a Brailler, a machine that embosses text in Braille.

Both versions will be hand-bound into a collection to be put on display in the library.

Poetry is a genre not often translated into Braille due to a lack of funding, according to Shelton.

The pair have been discussing the project and applying for funding for the last two years, and hope the combination of braille and poetry will attract a diverse crowd.

"You will get to encounter the language of poetry - spoken, read, and brailled, and in those encounters you get to feel the wider world," Shelton told AAP.

(IN)visible Library is among 13 fellowships together worth $170,000 awarded on Tuesday night.

Among the other projects to win funding is a plan by Dr Li-Zhong Zhang to translate poetry by Australian Aboriginal writers into Mandarin Chinese, and publish a bilingual book.

The retired translator, who is originally from Wuhan but has lived in Australia since 1986, said while there is growing interest in Australian culture within China, there's less understanding about Indigenous Australians.

"A lot of people would like to know more about Australian culture, but if they want to understand Australian culture they must start with Aboriginal culture," he told AAP.

After researching the library's poetry collection, Dr Zhang hopes to work with ten current Aboriginal writers and translate a total of 100 poems.

He also intends to organise a forum for Aboriginal and Chinese writers, which he believes would be the first event of its kind in Australia.