The Judas Tree

Lorna Staveley Anker was born in 1914. She used to joke that this was the cause of the First World War. In truth, the poems in this fine collection reveal her as New Zealand’s first woman war poet. There are poems here that arise from her childhood memories of Kaiser Bill. Three of her uncles died in France. She was a ‘war widow’ in the Second World War, one of the civilian casualties who make up what is known as ‘the unsung generation’. This collection contains the best of her published poems and a substantial number never seen before. Edited with loving care by Canterbury poet Bernadette Hall, this is a book that will open your eyes to our nation’s invisible history, the story of a semmingly ordinary life that proves to be extraordinary in the telling.