Poetry review – SHAKING THE APPLE TREE: Kimberly K Williams considers an important collection of witness poems by Jane Simpson
Shaking the Apple Tree:
Poems in Response to Sexual Abuse by Clergy
in the Anglican Church
Jane Simpson
Poiema Books
ISBN 9780473707590
64pp. NZ$25
Jane Simpson’s Shaking the Apple Tree is a book that serves as a kind of reckoning, addressing the impact of years of sexual abuse by Anglican priests and a Church administration that failed to deal with it appropriately. These poems bear witness to the abuse that both named and nameless women have suffered; as such, it is more than a book about what might have happened to an individual. Indeed, the poems are much wider in their collective scope and as such function as witness poems – speaking for a collective or whole.
Witness poetry as a recognised form of creative activism first took firm hold at the end of the twentieth century with the publication, in 1993, of the first anthology of witness poems, edited by Carolyn Forché, Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness. As the anthology’s title indicates, one main role of witness poetry is to keep the human struggles of the past in present memory via the space and voice of a poem. This specific role that poetry performs does the opposite of what many governments and, in this case, religious administrations do: instead of covering trauma, it exposes it through language and image, holding a space for those affected while informing readers of transgressions that may have been hidden. It is a tall task, and Simpson’s poems take it on deliberately. The book’s introduction addresses this point itself: “As it has always done, poetry employs symbolism and metaphor to express trauma in ways listeners and readers can immediately identify with. Imagined accounts based on historical evidence have the emotional power to break through the conspiracy of silence surrounding sexual abuse”. Here is an apt description of one role of witness poetry and the way that it can work. And, with this statement, the reader can be sure of Simpson’s deliberate approach.
The book is broken into three sections, and it is prefaced by an introduction which adds historical, social, and legal context to the poems, ending with a list of consulted sources, establishing strong credibility for Simpson’s work as a whole. In the book’s first section, the poem ‘Cloud of Witnesses’ acknowledges the act of witnessing via poetry. It is a short poem with twelve lines, and every even line stands alone as the repeated phrase “accuses you”. Multiple points of view, including “the figure of sorrow hanging on the cross” to the Archangel Michael, accuse the addressed ‘you’. There is great power in the brevity and form of these twelve lines, recognising and asserting transgressions of the clergy.
Witness writing is most effective when enough space is left in a poem’s depictions and assertions for readers to supply their own imaginations and emotions. What a reader’s imagination is likely to conjure, via the poems’ details, phrasing, and images, will likely be experienced more powerfully than any direct emotion expressed by a speaker or by the poet (via the poem’s speaker). In a poem, for instance, a speaker can express anger, or the poem can fashion or depict a moment that will incite the reader’s own sense of injustice, thus imparting the anger. In most places, Simpson’s poems do just this. However, in other places, the poems fall a little short.
The poem ‘From a Bereaved Mother’ is an example where the poem doesn’t quite leave enough room for the reader’s emotions. The penultimate stanza reads,
The man of God preyed
on my need,
preyed on me
At this point in the poem, there is a risk here of too much telling. That said, the final couplet restores the poem’s power in an unexpected way:
He was protected –
I was disbelieved
where the last word, ‘disbelieved,’ picks up the long vowel sound three lines above with the word ‘need’, creating a near-rhyming couplet, and in that way the rhyme acts as a slamming door.
‘Out of their own mouths’ is an example where the poem is fashioned to allow the language and the situation to speak for itself:
One said
She asked for it –
she had lost her baby
Another
I hit my wife –
she just wouldn’t shut up
The poem opens with familiar language providing common excuses given by male abusers, such as, “she asked for it”. In the tenth line of the poem, the bishop rolls his eyes and provides the old predictable excuse for men ‘misbehaving’: “He was just being a lad, / boys will be boys – // said the bishop, groping / for words”. The poem uses the bishop’s pat and insufficient explanation to allow the reader to feel the injustice – the brushing aside of actions, which then instigates the reader’s anger. That moment in the poem, combined with the stanza break on the word ‘groping,’ is a subtle but brilliant way to suggest many possible transgressions, inciting a reader’s sense of injustice. This is witness poetry at its best.
Simpson’s use of poetic technique is subtle. The book’s purpose via its subject matter is so primary that how Simpson goes about realising the poems can seem obscured. But there are hidden gems. For example, the use of anaphora in ‘The Last Ditch of the anti-feminist’ builds tension in the poem via grammar, with a series of lines starting with the phrase “if the…”, beginning, for example, with the lines, “If the woman is an object / if the woman is a chattel / if the woman is a man’s property” and with well over a dozen lines to go, possibilities mount with the word ‘if’, and readers are waiting for the final stanza to complete the idea and deliver the ‘then.’ It is a simple but effective way to structure a poem with growing tension.
As the lines above illustrate, what works best for the book is that, while it is a book about sexual abuse by Anglican clergy, the poems clearly explore and examine the social dichotomies and historical biases and bases that have created the conditions which have allowed the abuse to happen. When, historically, at one point women were literally the legal property of men, what is the outcome generations later? In addition, other poems, like ‘Mother God, Father Priest,’ address issues that women encounter throughout their lives that have been generally ignored for many centuries by Western society, including Christian religion – issues such as delivering babies, the impact of still births, the presence of monthly periods. So that, ultimately, these are not only witness poems but also poems about topics that, though often overlooked in discourse, matter to over half of the world’s population.
Some of the poems here use religious forms, like a litany, to put those who were raised in Christianity in a recognisable place before quickly subverting expectations, as in the poem ‘Beyond Redemption?’ This is how good poetry works – pulling a reader in with something familiar before changing it, and a litany, in its repetition and rhythm, is a natural place to do this. Ultimately, drawing on both Christian prayer forms and also on imagery allows for some revisionism, as indicated the title image, ‘shaking the apple tree’, calling to mind Eve in the garden behaving in a manner far more gregarious than merely biting the apple.
The book’s final poem is a blessing – again using anaphora to lull the reader into a rhythm that offers a type of benediction. After a difficult journey witnessing the effects of the abuse by clergy in the Anglican Church, the poem, ‘A Feather on the Breath of God,’ offers a hopeful ending, wherein Simpson slips in another rare rhyme to close both the poem and the book:
May she eat at the banquet
May the table be set for all
May she rule at the city gate
And justice be her call.
This book is not easy to read, nor should it be. Indeed, to gain both a wide and personal sense of the effects of years of abuse by Anglican clergy, Simpson’s Shaking the Apple Tree is indispensable and a worthy read.
Nov 13 2024
London Grip Poetry Review – Jane Simpson
Poetry review – SHAKING THE APPLE TREE: Kimberly K Williams considers an important collection of witness poems by Jane Simpson
Jane Simpson’s Shaking the Apple Tree is a book that serves as a kind of reckoning, addressing the impact of years of sexual abuse by Anglican priests and a Church administration that failed to deal with it appropriately. These poems bear witness to the abuse that both named and nameless women have suffered; as such, it is more than a book about what might have happened to an individual. Indeed, the poems are much wider in their collective scope and as such function as witness poems – speaking for a collective or whole.
Witness poetry as a recognised form of creative activism first took firm hold at the end of the twentieth century with the publication, in 1993, of the first anthology of witness poems, edited by Carolyn Forché, Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness. As the anthology’s title indicates, one main role of witness poetry is to keep the human struggles of the past in present memory via the space and voice of a poem. This specific role that poetry performs does the opposite of what many governments and, in this case, religious administrations do: instead of covering trauma, it exposes it through language and image, holding a space for those affected while informing readers of transgressions that may have been hidden. It is a tall task, and Simpson’s poems take it on deliberately. The book’s introduction addresses this point itself: “As it has always done, poetry employs symbolism and metaphor to express trauma in ways listeners and readers can immediately identify with. Imagined accounts based on historical evidence have the emotional power to break through the conspiracy of silence surrounding sexual abuse”. Here is an apt description of one role of witness poetry and the way that it can work. And, with this statement, the reader can be sure of Simpson’s deliberate approach.
The book is broken into three sections, and it is prefaced by an introduction which adds historical, social, and legal context to the poems, ending with a list of consulted sources, establishing strong credibility for Simpson’s work as a whole. In the book’s first section, the poem ‘Cloud of Witnesses’ acknowledges the act of witnessing via poetry. It is a short poem with twelve lines, and every even line stands alone as the repeated phrase “accuses you”. Multiple points of view, including “the figure of sorrow hanging on the cross” to the Archangel Michael, accuse the addressed ‘you’. There is great power in the brevity and form of these twelve lines, recognising and asserting transgressions of the clergy.
Witness writing is most effective when enough space is left in a poem’s depictions and assertions for readers to supply their own imaginations and emotions. What a reader’s imagination is likely to conjure, via the poems’ details, phrasing, and images, will likely be experienced more powerfully than any direct emotion expressed by a speaker or by the poet (via the poem’s speaker). In a poem, for instance, a speaker can express anger, or the poem can fashion or depict a moment that will incite the reader’s own sense of injustice, thus imparting the anger. In most places, Simpson’s poems do just this. However, in other places, the poems fall a little short.
The poem ‘From a Bereaved Mother’ is an example where the poem doesn’t quite leave enough room for the reader’s emotions. The penultimate stanza reads,
At this point in the poem, there is a risk here of too much telling. That said, the final couplet restores the poem’s power in an unexpected way:
where the last word, ‘disbelieved,’ picks up the long vowel sound three lines above with the word ‘need’, creating a near-rhyming couplet, and in that way the rhyme acts as a slamming door.
‘Out of their own mouths’ is an example where the poem is fashioned to allow the language and the situation to speak for itself:
One said She asked for it – she had lost her baby Another I hit my wife – she just wouldn’t shut upThe poem opens with familiar language providing common excuses given by male abusers, such as, “she asked for it”. In the tenth line of the poem, the bishop rolls his eyes and provides the old predictable excuse for men ‘misbehaving’: “He was just being a lad, / boys will be boys – // said the bishop, groping / for words”. The poem uses the bishop’s pat and insufficient explanation to allow the reader to feel the injustice – the brushing aside of actions, which then instigates the reader’s anger. That moment in the poem, combined with the stanza break on the word ‘groping,’ is a subtle but brilliant way to suggest many possible transgressions, inciting a reader’s sense of injustice. This is witness poetry at its best.
Simpson’s use of poetic technique is subtle. The book’s purpose via its subject matter is so primary that how Simpson goes about realising the poems can seem obscured. But there are hidden gems. For example, the use of anaphora in ‘The Last Ditch of the anti-feminist’ builds tension in the poem via grammar, with a series of lines starting with the phrase “if the…”, beginning, for example, with the lines, “If the woman is an object / if the woman is a chattel / if the woman is a man’s property” and with well over a dozen lines to go, possibilities mount with the word ‘if’, and readers are waiting for the final stanza to complete the idea and deliver the ‘then.’ It is a simple but effective way to structure a poem with growing tension.
As the lines above illustrate, what works best for the book is that, while it is a book about sexual abuse by Anglican clergy, the poems clearly explore and examine the social dichotomies and historical biases and bases that have created the conditions which have allowed the abuse to happen. When, historically, at one point women were literally the legal property of men, what is the outcome generations later? In addition, other poems, like ‘Mother God, Father Priest,’ address issues that women encounter throughout their lives that have been generally ignored for many centuries by Western society, including Christian religion – issues such as delivering babies, the impact of still births, the presence of monthly periods. So that, ultimately, these are not only witness poems but also poems about topics that, though often overlooked in discourse, matter to over half of the world’s population.
Some of the poems here use religious forms, like a litany, to put those who were raised in Christianity in a recognisable place before quickly subverting expectations, as in the poem ‘Beyond Redemption?’ This is how good poetry works – pulling a reader in with something familiar before changing it, and a litany, in its repetition and rhythm, is a natural place to do this. Ultimately, drawing on both Christian prayer forms and also on imagery allows for some revisionism, as indicated the title image, ‘shaking the apple tree’, calling to mind Eve in the garden behaving in a manner far more gregarious than merely biting the apple.
The book’s final poem is a blessing – again using anaphora to lull the reader into a rhythm that offers a type of benediction. After a difficult journey witnessing the effects of the abuse by clergy in the Anglican Church, the poem, ‘A Feather on the Breath of God,’ offers a hopeful ending, wherein Simpson slips in another rare rhyme to close both the poem and the book:
This book is not easy to read, nor should it be. Indeed, to gain both a wide and personal sense of the effects of years of abuse by Anglican clergy, Simpson’s Shaking the Apple Tree is indispensable and a worthy read.