The final editors of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care’s report, Whanaketia: Through pain and trauma, from darkness to light, were wise. At the very end of the enormous report, after the glossary, after the recommendations, after the case studies in appendix, the final word is given to poetry. The report closes with a waiata, A Love Song for the Living Seeds. After all that had been written, there needed to be some distillation of the story. Something that held the pain of truth yet shined the light of hope. Poetry was required. 

That’s why I’m so thankful for Jane Simpson’s contribution to the conversation in her excellent collection, “Shaking the Apple Tree: Poems in response to sexual abuse by clergy in the Anglican Church.” Poetry is the art form required to hold that tension of dark and light, to digest the complexities, to wrestle with the themes, to offer up snapshots that are at once both brutally specific and universal. Her poetry draws on and goes beyond the work of the Commission in giving a voice to the voiceless, and shining a disinfecting light into the dark corners of our church. 

Simpson acknowledges the limitations of words in her introduction, “Words fail when trying to convey the hurt and horror of living with sexual abuse. When a priest rapes a parishioner or ordinand a sacred trust… has been breached.” Simpson nevertheless uses her words powerfully to give voice to that hurt and horror. Her poetry is admirably concise, beautifully distilled, offering only what is needed and not a single letter more. While dealing with the heaviest of topics, her poetry remains light, nimble, and elegant.  

On the face of it, this is a book with a very niche target readership. However, any reader is richly rewarded with poems that speak powerfully to the most universal of themes. Grief, power, faith, anger, betrayal, hope. The poems are too refined to be called ‘raw’, but they haven’t lost their edge in the editing room. If anything, the editing has simply sharpened the adze of critique.

The poems are wide-ranging in scope. They focus not simply on the heinous acts of abuse, but also the inaction of institutions, and the theological roots that underpin such abuse. The poetry reflects Simpson’s deep grounding in feminist theology. “I hear through the ears of women who are silenced, of God as a woman refusing to be violated.”   

One feels the righteous rage coming off the page, but we are not left in anger. The collection is balanced with moments of dark humour, “He was just being a lad, boys will be boys – said the bishop, groping for words.” Simpson even gives space for hope, reclamation, and new life, with the final third of her collection, “Faith is not deflowered” reserved for words of promise.

I’m thankful for this gift to the church. It takes the enormity of the Royal Commission’s report and distils it down to the personal. It takes the personal and magnifies it to the universal. It helped me to better hear our painful stories, and to better heal from them. I commend the book to all. 

'Shaking the Apple Tree: Poems in response to sexual abuse by clergy in the Anglican Church' by Jane Simpson, is available from Poiema Books Christchurch 2024

Reviewer the Very Rev Ben Truman is the Dean of Christ Church Cathedral in the Diocese of Christchurch.