A question of professionalism

Critiquing the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka (SOSL) is difficult; it is like critiquing your Grandmother. Salt of the earth. And unlike some extravagant uncles who came and went, she has always been there in your life, keeping the home fires burning, bumbling on ceaselessly and never changing her ways. She is all about nostalgia. We are fond of her, and tolerate her many gaffes and idiosyncrasies.

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Listening to language and the experience of poetry 3

Last week, I discussed the importance of the writings of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot and the Prague school in re-thinking about the relationship between the uniqueness of a language, its phonetic structures and the experience of poetry. I wish to pursue that line of thinking further by focusing on two prominent perspectives on language, equally valid and thoughtful, but also containing many pitfalls. The idea is to explore them as a way of illuminating our own problematic of the poetic experience. The two perspectives I have in mind can be termed the universalist and the relativist.

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CulturalScene

Tragedy of 'Fantasy' and mock awards

In this week's column, I thought of reviewing the history of literary genre of fantasy as a prelude to look at our own phantom-like judges who are selected to promote English writing in Sri Lanka. These phantom-like characters can also be found among those writers who compare themselves as the winners of Sri Lankan literary awards similar to Booker Prize or Pulitzer Prize of Sri Lanka.

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