Born in Leeds in 1984 to Sri Lankan Tamil parents, Ravinthiran has been influenced by living in the diaspora with his work often looking at themes of migration, identity, and the legacies of colonialism, particularly between Britain and Sri Lanka. His work also explores the realities of assimilation to a new culture, with a key moment in childhood being elocution lessons provided by his parents to help with a speech impediment and to ‘correct’ his accent. This experience is seen in his works reflection on linguistics. His constant practice of verse for the lessons has influenced fascination with sound and rhythm seen in his poetry. In much of his work, both poetic and critical, there is a personal and historic exploration of race, post colonialism, identity and language.  

Ravinthiran studied his undergraduate at Oxford University where he was part of the poetry society. He later went to Cambridge University for his Masters. His initial influence within the world of poetry was John Keats, various contemporary poets and South Asian literary traditions. This comes through in his poetry where a formal style is blended with free verse to offer personal yet honed encounters. His work is often described as introspective, bringing a critical tone to his own life, and life of those in the diaspora, which is seen in his debut pamphlet ‘At home or nowhere’ published by tall-lighthouse press (2008).  

After the publication of his first pamphlet, Vidyan Ravinthiran was featured in many literary magazines such as Poetry Review and TLS, before publishing his full length collections ‘Grun-tu-molani’ and  ‘The Million-Petalled Flower of Being Here’. Alongside this he has contributed to the critical study of poetry with his work on Elizabeth Bishop, most notably the publication ‘Elizabeth Bishop's Prosaic’. He has taught at Cambridge, Birmingham and Durham in the UK, and now teaches at Harvard in the US.  

His poetical work not only brings forward conversations of race, diaspora and the tensions of post colonial realities, particularly between Sri Lanka and Britain, but he also supports bringing Sri Lankan poets into a global conversation. He has co-edited ‘Out of Sri Lanka: Tamil, Sinhala and English Poetry from Sri Lanka and its Diasporas’ with an aim to collate and share the diverse histories and voices from Sri Lanka, available from Penguin India. Alongside this his most recent work includes ‘Asian/Other’ (2025), which explored life, poetry, race and otherness through a critical lense. This work furthers his large contribution to an ever growing discourse on life in a post-colonial setting, exploring intergenerational trauma and the erasure of Asian bodies in Western media. 

Vidyan Ravinthiran is a key literary figure within contemporary writing, bringing forward conversations of contemporary and historic experiences of South Asian diaspora, particularly Sri Lankan, alongside challenging both tradition and content of British literature to create a more honest and wider narrative around British colonialism’s lasting effects.