Amnesia Findings

(Paperback)

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Winner of the 2018 Thomas Shapcott Prize for Poetry. Now I knit myself back into a human. It's hard work relearning the steps - slip-stitch, drop-stitch, pick-up stitch, loop. I get into a rhythm. The pattern is complex - I drop a few stitches. The holes form gaps in my memory. Knitting visions and memories, Anna Jacobson's collection traces the skeins of lost histories and the spaces of dropped stitches. Exquisite and whimsical, these poems bear witness to the broken and healed. Gentle but robust, these are poems of personal resilience, framed by explorations of Jewish culture and family and fuelled by a boundless and exhilarating imaginativeness.

Reviews

'A fascinating, thoroughly engaging exploration of culture and spirituality, belief and rationality, this book's poems are at once lucid and mysterious, profound and immediate. They evoke the esoteric language of their sources in Jewish lore, whilst being unmistakably modern and contemporary. They signal the development of an exciting new voice in Australian poetry.' Judges' comments, Thomas Shapcott Prize

'Amnesia Findings is an intricately executed portrait of mental pain, and familial and domestic solace. Jacobson's poems howl and sing, at once heartbreaking and also soothing with the beauty of their virtuoso linguistic performances. What a remarkable collection.' Lee Kofman

'Human brokenness and human connectedness, Anna Jacobson lays both bare, puts them in the same breath, same beat, in her soul-unfurling, witty poems.' Maria Tumarkin

'Raw and honest, Jacobson paints language with the indelible strokes of memory and healing.' Leah Kaminsky

'I love this collection of poems. They touch me deeply. I love Anna Jacobson's courage, and her artistry. She ushers the reader into her dream worlds, and into the heart of madness. She retrieves countless fragments of memory that her shrink, as Anna puts it, had sacrificed for her sanity. And in the process, she creates a unity and wholeness out of a fractured life. In so doing, she holds a mirror to many fractured lives. The poet provides comfort, and her poems are studded with revelations and redeeming touches of wicked humour. Anna moves far beyond her inner struggles, and reawakens and retrieves the memories of others. The work is informed by family memories, heirlooms and recipes which have crossed oceans - a wandering Yiddish culture - out of which Anna fashions her own compelling, intimate mythology. Objects are re-animated. Startling images keep the work grounded. Her line drawings, like the poems, are as fine, magical and miraculous as spiders' webs. Working in tandem, they strengthen the webs, while allowing them to remain graceful and delicate. In this, there is both truth and beauty. Healing and celebration. A coherent story, woven from restored memory. Amnesia Findings is a treasure.' Arnold Zable

Author Bio

Anna Jacobson is a Brisbane poet and artist. In 2018 she won the Queensland Premier's Young Publishers and Writers Award. She holds a Master of Philosophy in poetry from Queensland University of Technology, a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Creative and Professional Writing) and a Bachelor of Photography with Honours from Griffith University. Her poetry has been published in literary journals, including Cordite, Rabbit, Meanjin, ABR's States of Poetry Queensland and Verity La, and her chapbook, The Last Postman (Vagabond Press, 2018), is part of deciBels series 3. Amnesia Findings is Anna's first full-length poetry collection. www.annajacobson.com.au