Unexpectedly: A Collection of Poems - Hardcover

Wickramasinghe, Maithree

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0143474405 ISBN 13: 9780143474401

Publisher: Penguin, 2025

Synopsis

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.

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 this title

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0143474405
• ISBN 13: 9780143474401
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 128