How to Knit a Human: A Memoir

I want to know what it was like to have crossed into the realm of madness. After all, I did it. I went mad. Why can’t I have the secret knowledge that comes with it? How do you write a memoir when you have lost your memories? She awakens in hospital, greeted by nurses and patients she doesn’t recognise, but who address her with familiarity. She decides to untangle the clues. How to Knit a Human is about the splintering of memory from psychosis and Electroconvulsive therapy that Anna Jacobson experienced as an involuntary patient in 2011. Through knitting and assemblage, weaving experiences around the gaps of memories that are not accessible, the memory barriers begin to crumble. This book is a reclamation of memory and self.

Anna Jacobson is an award-winning writer and artist from Meanjin (Brisbane). Her poetry collection Amnesia Findings (UQP) won the 2018 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize. Anna’s second illustrated poetry collection, Anxious in a Sweet Store was published with Upswell in 2023. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Creative Writing from the Queensland University of Technology.