Anxious in a Sweet Store by Anna Jacobson (Signed Copy)

Anxious in a Sweet Store is Anna Jacobson’s second illustrated poetry collection where the ‘sweet’, whimsical, humorous, and quirky is juxtaposed with the ‘anxious’ forces of mental illness within the disabling mental health ‘care’ system. Dip into this collection as you please, pick and choose, or devour the whole lot from start to finish. You are invited to take lessons in anxiety, play a French horn, learn how to photograph poets, and haunt a seclusion room in a psychiatric ward. Themes of food, family, dreams, and culture crystallise, while the poet’s mind is fizz bang sherbet on the tongue. Anxious in a Sweet Store is an inventive collection of poems that build and enrich each other across threads of music, anxiety, and observation from a writer who wants her voice heard so others feel less alone in their experiences.

About the Author: Anna Jacobson is an award-winning writer and artist from Brisbane. Amnesia Findings (UQP, 2019) is her first full-length poetry collection, which won the 2018 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize. In 2020 Anna won the Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Writing and was awarded a Queensland Writers Fellowship. In 2018 she won the Queensland Premier’s Young Publishers and Writers Award. Her poetry chapbook The Last Postman (Vagabond Press, 2018) was published as part of the deciBel 3 series. She has been a finalist in the Brisbane Portrait Prize, Blake Art Prize and Marie Ellis Prize for Drawing.