A poet should be driven by social responsibility

Here in an exclusive interview with Montage; senior media personal and poet Lynn Ockersz speaks about his poetic experiences in reference to his latest collection of poetry entitled The Peace Thou Gives. The Peace Thou Gives marks an important trajectory in contemporary devotional poems in English as well as contemporary Sri Lankan poems in English. One of the salient facets of the collection is that it redefines the role of a poet and the poet’s inalienable responsibility towards society at large.

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The relevance and irrelevance of Harold Bloom

Encounters - By Pof Wimal Dissanayake

The idea of reading well is central to literary education. Teachers of literature, both at the secondary and tertiary levels, encourage their students to read well. Therefore, the notion of misreading, reading badly, has traditionally being looked down upon. However, in recent times, with the writings of theorists like Harold Bloom, the concept of misreading has emerged as an ideal to be cherished. This, of course, goes against conventional wisdom and has generated troubled responses. In today's column I wish to deal with this topic of misreading and why Bloom finds it both inescapable and desirable.

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Galle Literary Festival and politics of literature

Cultural Scene - By Indeewara Thilakarathne

In this week’s column, I would like to explore one of the thought provoking sessions of the Galle Literary Festival entitled Aftershocks, the lingering legacy of civil war and the ‘after shocks’ of the session and the perennial issue of politics of literature.

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