[2] Wikkramasinha was educated at St Thomas' College, Mount Lavinia, Sri Lanka, where he studied law.
His interest in Sinhala literature led him to experiment with methods of fusing Western and South Asian traditions in his writing.
Wikkramasinha's work appeared in Madrona, Eastern Horizon, New Ceylon Writing, Outposts, University of Chicago Review, and other local and international journals, and was published privately by him in Janakiharana and Other Poems ( 1967 ), Fifteen Poems ( 1970 —both Kandy), and Nossa Senhora dos Chingalas ( 1973 ), O Regal Blood ( 1975 ), and The Grasshopper Gleaming ( 1976 —all Colombo).
In honour of a Sri Lankan artist of a previous generation, Wikkramasinha edited and privately published Twelve Poems to Justin Daraniyagala 1903 –67 (Kandy, 1971 ).
They whisper death-stories But it was only my woman Dunkiriniya, The very lamp of my heart, That died Consider the other poem, "From the life of the folk poet Ysinno".
Ysinno cut the bamboo near Hanikette, And from those wattles made his hut And had nothing to cover it with, nothing Like a hundred and sixty Bales of straw.
Menike, a proper noun is used in certain areas of Sri Lanka to refer to the lady of the house and her daughters.
Thiru Kandiah points out that even the rhythmic quality of the expression of "O", in "O the rains are coming near", plays a significant role in creating the distinctively Lankan effects.
[9] The cautious arrangement of the lines and the choice of syntactic structures effectively evoke the pleading, anxious tone of Ysinno and the passive authority of Menike.
The inversion of the word order in "and from these wattles made his hut", and "to the Menike said how poor he was", is a distinctive feature of Sri Lankan English.
Thus, Wikkramasinha"s handling of English language to express his thoughts and feelings in a way comes to the heart of the native reader.
He has already made the English language as an expressive medium to convey the local flavor and idiom by accommodating the Sri Lankan imagery.
His language depicts the exact picture of the rural areas in Sri Lanka and invites the readers to a homely background.