I started writing in Sinhala when I was a student and also translated from English to Sinhala but I never tried to publish my work. As I had already settled down in England I thought of writing in the English medium. I began to send my work to poetry magazines and I am very lucky that my work has been widely accepted. My work was included in The Redbeck book of British South Asian Poetry ed. by Dr. Debjani Chatterjee. My poem Woodland Grove appeared in the book The Emlit Project, published by Brunel University in which the work of writers in nineteen minority European languages was gathered together. I had difficulty in getting published my novel Like the Wind. This is because publishing has increasingly become the preserve of TV celebrities unless you are already very well known in the media. I was fortunate in that Sixties Press, the publisher of my poetry collections, decided to venture into novels.

My other publications are: Letter to a Friend, City of Leeds, Under Any Sky, In Exile, Silent Protest, On Pennine Heights and Across the Pennine Moors. These collections of poetry have been generously reviewed especially by Dr. Debjani Chatterjee, a leading figure in the British literary scene. She was Chair of the Translators’ Panel of the Arts Council of England and now chairs the National Association of Writers in Education. She has written and edited over thirty books, two of which won the Raymond Williams Prize.

A great many things inspire me, ranging from the death of my pet dog, which lived for seventeen years, to the sweeping vistas of Haworth moor, which inspired Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, in my view the greatest novel in the English language. The changing seasons of England often make me long to be back in Sri Lanka. Looking out of my bedroom window on a cold January winter morning at the bare trees, rows of terraced houses and wide roads covered in snow I feel a prisoner in exile. I remember Kalidasa’s Meghaduta, in which a prisoner sent messages to his beloved through the clouds.

Spring flowers bring back memories of my childhood days when Erabadu blossoms on hedgerows appear with the message of the oncoming New Year. I remember how my mother prepared the meal at an auspicious time and I can still smell rasa kevili made of kitul pani. Summer with its blazing heat reminds me of harvest in August. I so much miss my home country with its everlasting tropical beauty.

No. There is no such thing in England as the local market but I suppose in some ways my work is associated with Yorkshire and with writers based there who write about that astonishingly beautiful county and its warm and generous people. I spend my time between London and Leeds and the writing comes from the tension of not been settled permanently in either place. Of course nostalgia for Sri Lanka is a thread which runs through all my work and that is an inspiring tension too.

I am writing a new novel which is in some ways a sequel to Like the Wind but introduces some new characters.

Fifteen years ago I took a big risk and left my secure job with Eagle Star Insurance and began a business providing accommodation for poor single parents in the inner city of Leeds. It was a very rewarding but at times very stressful experience as I had to learn to deal with people who had serious mental health problems. Some had been prostitutes, some had been or still were drug addicts and alcoholics. Often they had been shoplifters or burglars and had served long prison terms. The most interesting character I met was the woman I call ‘Eileen’ in my novel. She had been a brothel madame, was four times divorced and had had a long standing affair with a notorious criminal who himself had literary talents and had written his autobiography Sweet Agony from his prison cell which won the Arthur Koestler Literary Award. Involvement with the police and social workers was a regular feature in my life during those years.

Yes. I visit my home country as often as I can. My sister lives in Matara where she runs a nursery school and my niece, her husband and family in Colombo. Sadly I have lost contact with some of my old friends over the years.

How many times have I wished to return to my homeland! My son and daughter were born and grew up in England so my family responsibilities are largely here. The speed of life in England is hectic and stressful and I very much miss the slow paced unravelling beauty of the Sri Lanka I grew up in the fifties.

I so much miss the beauty and friendly people of Sri Lanka’s earthly paradise, its forests and wild life and endless beaches. I was taught by Dr. Sarachchandra at Peradeniya and I was fortunate enough to meet him at a London literary festival a few years before his death. His Maname is one of greatest achievements in world literature and even those who don’t know a word of Sinhala do not find it difficult to respond to the haunting lyrical beauty of Dr. Sarachchandra’s work. My years in Sri Lanka are unforgettable; they haunt my dreams by nights and my thoughts by day.