Grant Award View - GA204580
Invisible Walls: Poetry as a Doorway to Intercultural Understanding
Australia and Korea are both grappling with creative isolation due to COVID-19 flying restrictions that prevent artistic interconnection via physical exchanges. Even when restrictions ease, reducing flying remains important for environmental reasons. ‘Invisible Walls’ redresses this need, using poetry, letters, and video-conferencing to facilitate fully online intercultural exchanges, thus nurturing our countries’ creative ties despite current challenges. The project model fuses two successful past projects by grant application team members: a physical exchange between Korean and Australian run by Prof Dan Disney (Sogang University) in 2016; and a journal special issue co-edited by Dr Amelia Walker (UniSA), which paired Indian and Australian poets. Across 2 years, 10 Korean and 10 Australian poets (5/year each country) will exchange translated poems (8 each: 4 original and 4 response-poems) and letters (2 each) exploring cultural similarities and differences, with a view to understanding how we can strengthen Korean-Australian relations. Writers will also converse live in interpreted Zooms. Writing from this project will be published bilingually in internationally-reaching journals New Writing (UK-based) and World Literature Today (USA-based) for general and academic readers. To enhance community benefits, we will prioritise poets who can share their learning with others, e.g. through public speaking, teaching, and/or publishing.