Emerging Writers Series: Anna Jacobson
“Writing is my survival tool. It’s the only thing that gets me through the hard times. Crafting a narrative and story from your life is a powerful act and can help you see things for what they are. If I couldn’t find a way to express the things I have gone through, I think I would implode. Instead, I pin it to the page.”
Anna Jacobson’s debut memoir, How to Knit a Human (2024), is distinct in one key aspect: for much of the book, she cannot remember key details of her life.
Following Anna’s experience following a severe psychotic episode and subsequent rounds of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), readers are invited to gain unique, compassionate insights into the impact of severe mental health, the systems of care that can, unfortunately, cause harm, and the formative, self-defining power of creativity to knit ourselves back together.
It was a pleasure to discuss Anna’s hope-inducing book, the role of Narrative Medicine, how creativity has given her back her identity, and where you can find more of her work.
The best place to start is by learning a little more about you! Can you share more about your background and journey as a writer and poet?
My Mum filled my cot with picture books when I was a baby and I remember staring at each drawing for hours. When I was three, my Nana asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up – I said I wanted to be a writer and illustrate my own books. I have always been encouraged by my family, and their belief in me has helped me arrive where I am today.
Before finding poetry in words, I found poetry in the visual. I am a photographic artist and studied at the Queensland College of Art, where I graduated with Honours in 2009. It wasn’t until after my hospitalisation in 2011 that poetry and writing became a medium that found me. The poetry form was just short enough for my concentration span in 2011, which had been affected by electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) treatments at that time. Poetry was the best way I could capture these condensed moments that would have escaped remembering if I had not recorded them. Keeping a diary was also vital. Storytelling through words was what helped me to connect my experiences, and I have been fortunate to have had two illustrated poetry collections published so far: Amnesia Findings (UQP, 2019), which won the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, and Anxious in a Sweet Store (Upswell, 2023).
I am so grateful to my writing mentors who nurtured me along the way. I have grown so much as a writer because of them. I now find myself passing on what I have learned in my work as a mentor. My writing mentors include the brilliant Felicity Plunkett, Kári Gíslason, Pascalle Burton, Nathan Shepherdson, and David Stavanger. I have also participated in many workshops facilitated by writers such as Andy Jackson, and Kris Kneen - I am very lucky.
How to Knit a Human (2024) is an intimate account of your experiences with psychosis and electroconvulsive therapy. I found it a really brave read, and it speaks to the importance of authentic mental health narratives in developing our understanding of individual lived experiences. What are some of your hopes for the book, and how it reaches others who may have had similar experiences?
I wrote this book not just to piece myself together, but for other psychiatric survivors wanting to feel less alone in their experiences. When I had my first episode of psychosis, I felt the need to read other women’s accounts of madness to find representation.
In 2011, there weren’t many memoirs from the perspective of an author who couldn’t remember their experience of madness and had memory loss to the extent that I did, so it was important to me that my experience of the ‘not-remembering’ was captured.
Making the personal decision to tell my story was possible because of the writers and theorists who have already contributed so much through their advocacy and activism in spaces like literature, Mad Studies and Disability Studies. If not for these trailblazers, I might not have felt safe to contribute my own words. My hope is for a change to the future of health care and systems so that the world can become more trauma-informed. Kindness, respect, and empathy from medical professionals make a difference.
We’re seeing more books come out about personal experiences of mental health, the intersection of care and professional support, and the ways this often fails individuals. I read a little of your PhD thesis on Narrative Medicine and would love to hear more about this growing literature genre and how it holds deep social value.
Narrative Medicine is a new subject for medical students in some Australian universities only as of last year but was first developed by Rita Charon in America in the early 2000s. It’s currently offered to create better conditions for understanding and empathy from health care professionals towards the patient through storytelling.
As a health humanities field, it was designed to give medical students opportunities to learn close listening skills doctors often lack and help fix a deficit in empathy from doctors, as well as provide them with experience in creative writing and reading for greater reflection. Narrative medicine should be a compulsory subject for all medical students in Australia and all current medical practitioners. The subject is geared toward medical professionals; however, my PhD research into Narrative Medicine looked at what it can offer from the patient-survivor perspective as a way for us to flourish and achieve in-depth representations of our own experiences and stories.
When patients find ways to express their experiences to medical professionals through writing and art, practitioners must adapt and expand their skillset to better understand our stories. The medical world must acknowledge the valuable knowledge produced in artistic works that psychiatric survivors create through storytelling. We are generating a new way of knowledge production and new ways of knowing that will, in turn lead to higher levels of understanding of Narrative Medicine, saving the future of health care. Medical professionals would also benefit from visual training to help support survivors who express themselves in forms outside of written and verbal expression. This new way of reading patients’ works would help in the progress of health care and generate conditions for empathy and understanding, which is Narrative Medicine’s goal. By challenging what storytelling is, we as survivors can tell stories on our own terms.
One of the things that stood out to me about your memoir was the power of creative pursuits to recuperate, redefine oneself, and find joy. Could you expand on the role of creativity in your life to reclaim yourself following your hospitalisation?
Writing is my survival tool. It’s the only thing that gets me through the hard times. Crafting a narrative and story from your life is a powerful act and can help you see things for what they are. If I couldn’t find a way to express the things I have gone through, I think I would implode. Instead, I pin it to the page.
Before, photography and video art were my world and form of expression. All my poetry collections and my memoir were products of my mental health journey from my ‘after’ self. Having these books as time capsules means a lot to me. Following my hospitalisation in 2011, I lost my drawing ability from the effects of the ECT and the cocktail of medications I was coerced to take. But my ability to draw has fortunately come back with time.
Art-wise, I now don’t take anywhere near as many photographs as I used to before I was hospitalised. When I’m stuck on my writing, though, I turn to art, which helps me get unstuck again.
And as a bit of a follow-on, you’re also a poet, and I felt a lot of poetic threads woven together throughout the memoir (you write beautifully). I’m always curious about how creatives blend or separate the different components of their writing practice. How does writing poetry differ from writing memoir for you, if at all?
I built my memoir from the poems I wrote and diary entries from this time. The length of a long-form memoir and the structural weaving is the biggest difference between the two forms for me. In my memoir, I braided three timelines and selves, whereas my poems are usually condensed experiences and observations as shorter works. I had to really work hard at the transitions between scenes in my memoir, compared to poems that can be their own separate entities. Sometimes I have a work that becomes a poem, but this work might also turn into a novella, a play, or a photograph.
Often, I might move pieces of writing between projects until they feel settled. The work lets you know when it feels right. Time and space for the ideas to rest and grow by themselves is helpful to create distance and see what the work wants to become.
Lastly, what’s next for you? Any new creative projects in the wings you can tell us a little about or any upcoming events where readers can engage with you and your work?
My third illustrated poetry collection All Rage Blaze Light is due to come out with Upswell next year in September 2025. I am also working on an experimental vignette series that I hope to turn into a graphic memoir. For more of my work, readers can visit my artist website at www.annajacobson.com.au
Read our review of How to Knit a Human here!
Anna Jacobson is an award-winning writer and artist from Meanjin (Brisbane). She has written three illustrated books: a memoir – How to Knit a Human (NewSouth, 2024), and the poetry collections Anxious in a Sweet Store (Upswell, 2023) and Amnesia Findings (UQP, 2019). In 2020, Anna won the Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Writing, and in 2018 she won the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and Queensland Premier’s Young Publishers and Writers Award. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Creative Writing from Queensland University of Technology. Anna’s poetry chapbook The Last Postman (Vagabond Press, 2018) was part of deciBels series 3. Her website is www.annajacobson.com.au
Elaine Chennatt is a writer, educator and psychology student currently residing in nipaluna. She has a special interest in bibliotherapy (how we use literature to make sense of our lives) and is endlessly curious about the creative philosophies of others. She lives with her husband and two bossy dachshunds on the not-so-sunny side of the river (IYKYK). Find her online at wordswithelaine.com.
