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| Wednesday, 16 July 2003 |
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Challenging forum Wonderful news that the Daily News is to launch a special Arts Supplement. Hopefully this will not only open its pages to expert commentaries on the current art scene-books, theatre, music, painting, dance etc. but will provide a forum for young writers of English prose and verse. This is very timely and important in a context where English has become so uniquely important for communication in a highly technological world, but as a means of creative expression. Way back in the nineteen forties the Ceylon Daily News launched the famous "Blue Page" supplement, for poetry, prose, essays and criticism. If I remember right it was edited by an English woman journalist. All of us young writers at the time were contributors to the supplement. The competitiveness, the desire to see oneself in print the outpouring of adolescent, romantic yearnings filled the Blue Page supplement. In its pages some of the best known journalists first made their debut: Tarzie Vittachi, Alfreda de Silva, Harrison Pieris, J.B. Alwis, etc. Harrison Pieris and Alfreda were the outstanding stars in Poetry, Mervyn first displayed his combative skills in its pages. Tarzie became a newspaper legend, Alfreda still writes with undiminished love for the English language, Harrison Pieris became the editor of the Catholic Messenger and I, after 6 years of professional journalism in London, was seduced by the cinema. My very best wishes for a successful creative, critical, and challenging forum for all writers in the English language. - Lester James Peries |
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