Unexpectedly is a poetry collection that captures life in Sri Lanka from the 1970s onwards—written from the inter-space of war and peace, the throes of the pandemic, and the edge of political chaos and personal crisis. Penned by Maithree Wickramasinghe, a Sri Lankan academic who has written and spoken widely on gender equality and feminism, it is available across India mid-February onwards.
It is a moving treatise that sweeps from the personal to the political, to the social, to the cerebral and the philosophical. The themes traverse from universal topics such as humanity, time, feminism, violence, and death to the experiential—the author’s life in academia, her encounters with diseases, and the gains and costs of her husband’s political career.
Written in a medley of poetic voices that are passionate as well as tranquil, measured as well as nonchalant, ironic as well as sincere, these poems are haunting and imaginative, at once instinctive even as they are historical.
About The Author:
Maithree Wickramasinghe is a Sri Lankan academic who has written and spoken widely on gender equality and feminism. She is Chair and Senior Professor of English at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, and founding Director of the Centre for Gender Studies. She’s also a Visiting Professor at the University of Sussex and an Honorary Professor at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. With over thirty years of experience, she’s an expert in gender equity and equality policies, training, and programme evaluation for organisations like the ILO, UNFPA, and UNESCO. She is the author of From Theory to Action – Women, Gender and Development and was an Associate Editor of the Wiley Blackwell Encyclopaedia on Gender and Sexuality Studies. Other work includes an influential training module, An Introduction to Gender Mainstreaming Universities. Wickramasinghe is a Champion for the Commonwealth Secretariat’s ‘Say No More Campaign’ and serves on various university boards, including the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh.
ADVANCE PRAISE:
‘An observant traveller of life, Maithree Wickramasinghe’s collection of poetry, Unexpectedly, is a stimulating and thought-provoking body of work. Wickramasinghe is not afraid to dive into subjects that are at times personal and at times unsettling. Her collection affirms poetry’s transformative force with a voice sometimes tender, sometimes raw and always feminist’ — AMEENA HUSSEIN, author, Ibn Battuta in Sri Lanka
‘Poems, it is said, rearrange words to sharpen their intensity; startling, sensuous, unafraid. Maithree Wickramasinghe’s poems speak of so much we intuitively recognize to be our common histories. Yet they also wander off elsewhere across many boundaries laden with the wistful sadnesses and joys of our times. There is a gentle fearless precision with which she probes pain, nudging us towards hope and healing’ — SALIMA HASHMI, painter and artist
‘Unexpectedly is a powerful collection of poems that challenges many assumptions about the business of living. Colours emerge as symbols of suffering as well as strength. The human body is itself a vehicle for interpreting social as well as political surmises. The feminist questions arise with new perception and in a fascinating variety. Maithree Wickramasinghe’s poetry startles and mesmerizes the reader with its unravelling of Sri Lanka’s history interwoven with her own unusual experiences’
— MALASHRI LAL, academic, writer and anthologist
