Jane
Simpson’s new poetry collection Shaking the Apple
Tree breaks open the taboo subject of sexual abuse by
Anglican clergy and offers hope and healing to victims and
survivors.
The poems pull no punches when it comes to
exposing the grooming, the bungling by church leaders, the
theology which shores up male power oven women, and the
difficulty victims and survivors have had in securing
justice.
It is now anticipated that change will follow
the Final Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into
Abuse in Care, to be released on 26 June. But will it bring
redress?
Ken Clearwater, Male Survivor Advocate, says:
‘Simpson’s courageous poems give victims a powerful
voice, that will, in time, help them heal.’
The Rev.
Louise Deans, author of Whistleblower, says: ‘I have
burned with anger reading Shaking the Apple Tree. These
poems should cause a bonfire in our hearts and minds, for
this is the Church’s new story.’
Award-winning
poets in New Zealand have written individual poems about
sexual abuse. Simpson is the first to write a full-length
collection, and has done so particularly about faith-based
institutions. Poems range from the molten to the
lyrical.
Internationally-acclaimed New Zealand poet,
Dr Tracey Slaughter, says: ‘These are poems that dare to
rage against a hidden “crucifixion”, to walk the unholy
stations of hurt that women have encountered behind church
doors, to tear away the ecclesiastical privilege that
enshrined the abusers’ rights to silence, to honour the
survivors who have risen from the wreckage and reconstructed
their frail faith. They insist women’s bodies are sacred
ground they will never surrender’.
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With an
historian’s eye, Simpson draws on evidence in witness
statements to the Royal Commission to create poems that
speak with unexpected power. Poetry and feminist theology
are brought together in the context of sexual violence.
Faith is redefined by women survivors, shaking the apple
tree.
Prof. David Tombs, Centre for Theology and
Public Issues, University of Otago,
says:
‘Jane Simpson’s poetry speaks
with compassion, honesty and sensitivity on the abuse crisis
in faith institutions. This is a powerful and
thought-provoking collection. Readers are likely to go back
to reading these poems again and
again’.
Penny Hale, Safeguarding and
Risk Manager in the Diocese of Waiapu, says: ‘I wish I had
had Jane Simpson’s poems before I redesigned my training
course’.
Shaking the Apple Tree is available now in
selected bookshops, and as an e-book and
PDF.
Notes
Author: Jane Simpson
Title:
Shaking the Apple Tree: poems in response to sexual abuse
by clergy
in the Anglican
Church
Publisher: Poiema Books
NZ release
date: March 2024
Extent: 64p.
RRP: $25.00
(Paperback) or $10.00 for the EPUB and the PDF
ISBN:
978-0-473-70759-0 (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-473-70760-6
(EPUB)
ISBN: 978-0-473-70762-0 (PDF)
About the
author
Jane Simpson is an award-winning poet from
Ōtautahi Christchurch. After working as a journalist, she
gained a PhD (Otago) in religion and gender in New Zealand
(1939-1959). In 1993 Simpson became the first tenured woman
academic in Religious Studies at the University of
Canterbury. She taught the Christian tradition and new
approaches to it, including feminist theology and
post-colonial studies. She gave lectures on sexual abuse and
the abuse of power in faith-based institutions. She never
expected to write a poetry collection on the
subject.
Shaking the Apple Tree is Simpson’s
fifth book of poetry and her third full-length collection.
Environmental themes and art wove together in Candlewick
Kelp (2002) and Tuning Wordsworth’s Piano
(2019). A world without maps (2016) drew on her
experience of teaching Muslim women English in a desert
school in the UAE. She wrote and published The
Farewelling of a Home (2021), a critically acclaimed
liturgy created for people who lost their homes in the
Christchurch earthquakes. Her fourth collection, Imagined
Scar, about her breast cancer journey, is due out later
in 2024.
Simpson won second place in the New Zealand
Poetry Society’s 2023 International Competition and was
placed third in 2020. She was highly commended in the
Caselberg Trust 2020 and 2021 International Poetry
Competitions. Her poems have appeared leading journals
including Allegro, London Grip, Poetry Wales, Hamilton
Stone Review, Meniscus, Catalyst, Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook
and takahē.
About the book
Simpson
started to write Shaking the Apple Tree following the
death in Christchurch of the Rev. Rob McCullough, a major
perpetrator priest in the Anglican Church. Her poems broke
the silence of the church authorities about his death, a
silence which left victims and survivors hanging in limbo.
For Simpson, as is the case for many women, sexual abuse is
more than an academic subject.
The poems are both
hard-hitting and empathetic. In capturing the horror
experienced by victims and survivors when they called out
for justice according to the Canons and Statutes of the
Anglican Church, Simpson writes as an historian and as an
Anglican committed to reform.
The Royal Commission of
Inquiry into Abuse in Care is now due to present its final
report on 26 June. Survivor advocates have argued that
poetry and other creative approaches can bring healing and
need to come beforehand as the final report could
re-traumatise the many people who gave
evidence.
Survivors of sexual abuse have welcomed
Shaking the Apple Tree as overcoming their sense of
isolation. Sexual abuse counsellors and safeguarding
advisors say it is making a much-needed creative
contribution in the field of health and
wellbeing.
‘It is appropriate that the book ends
with love poems to women who have been abused. For many
people, that is unthinkable. For poetry, anything is
possible’, Jane Simpson
says.
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