The Mad Poet's Tea Party

A$19.95

Sandy Jeffs

but I am madness

and madness is me

it holds you captive

like a hapless bunny

caught in the headlights.

In this moving collection of poems, award-winning writer Sandy Jeffs shares her journey through madness over four decades, drawing inspiration from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and the motley gathering of characters at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Both delightful and insightful, playful and serious, witty and whimsical, The Mad Poet’s Tea Party provides a devastating commentary on how our society treats those with mental illness from the perspective of someone who has experienced all its interventions. It captures in poetic form the enigmas and contradiction in madness.

2015 | ISBN 9781742199498 | Paperback | 210 x 148 mm | 82 pp

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Sandy Jeffs

but I am madness

and madness is me

it holds you captive

like a hapless bunny

caught in the headlights.

In this moving collection of poems, award-winning writer Sandy Jeffs shares her journey through madness over four decades, drawing inspiration from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and the motley gathering of characters at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Both delightful and insightful, playful and serious, witty and whimsical, The Mad Poet’s Tea Party provides a devastating commentary on how our society treats those with mental illness from the perspective of someone who has experienced all its interventions. It captures in poetic form the enigmas and contradiction in madness.

2015 | ISBN 9781742199498 | Paperback | 210 x 148 mm | 82 pp

Sandy Jeffs

but I am madness

and madness is me

it holds you captive

like a hapless bunny

caught in the headlights.

In this moving collection of poems, award-winning writer Sandy Jeffs shares her journey through madness over four decades, drawing inspiration from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and the motley gathering of characters at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Both delightful and insightful, playful and serious, witty and whimsical, The Mad Poet’s Tea Party provides a devastating commentary on how our society treats those with mental illness from the perspective of someone who has experienced all its interventions. It captures in poetic form the enigmas and contradiction in madness.

2015 | ISBN 9781742199498 | Paperback | 210 x 148 mm | 82 pp

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

The Madwoman in this Poem

Sensing Madness

Congratulations

Medicated

Cold Chemical Comfort

Marinade

Unquiet Mind

Of Shifting Images & Auras

Acrostic #1

Seeing the Insane

Waging War

Alice in Larundel Land

The Dark Hours

Dangling

Ceaseless Night

The Witching Hour

The Burrow

Mental Rape

Occupy My Mind

Caring for My Mind

Therapy: Prices Update

Passover

To Melancholia

Into the Dark Wood

The Mad Poet’s Tea Party

Acrostic #2

Seroquelled

SuperMadwoman

I Peeped

How?

Solitude

Awakening

Spirals

McMadness

I Called You Mad

There’s Something Dead in My House

When They Came to Get You

I am Not the Same Person

Surgery of the Soul

Threadbare

Calculating the Cost

Suicide

Staying Alive

To Be or Not To Be

Beggar

Housemate

Downsizing

The Social Worker

Where is the Rage?

The Sanity App

Done to Death

A Life


Reviews

Sandy is one of my all-time favourite poets and I admire her talent and courage immensely. For as Sandy puts it in “Dangling” ‘we dangle from a thread of sanity while madness snaps at our heels’ but it hasn’t stopped her from offering the very best of herself and we are the richer for her persistence over the years.

—Jean Taylor, Sinister Wisdom

It’s clear poetry is Jeffs’s world; it permeates ordinary human existence, doing its best to withstand insanity and capitalism.

—Michael Farrell, The Australian

Over six collections and a memoir, Melbourne poet Sandy Jeffs, has developed a considerable track record as an "insider" spokesperson for the mentally ill. She has battled schizophrenia and other disorders since 1976, From 1994, with her first book, Poems from the Madhouse, Jeffs has used poetry to provide a graphic insight into her situation and that of thousands of others enduring comparable problems.

—Geoff Page, Sydney Morning Herald

Parts will make you cry... It's a clever read. However it is our privileged entry into the halls of madness-our chaperone a dexterous poet, clearly in command of her language-that makes it an unforgettable one.

—Cherie Moselen, Warrandyte Diary

The Mad Poet's Tea Party puts it all on the table...it is the assertion of a poet who knows that 'every mad cloud has a sane lining', and that she can still be a renowned writer with a mental illness

—Alicia Bee, The Australian Writer

If you believe that 'blessed are the cracked for they let in the light', then double-blessed is Sandy because she lets in the funny too.

—Andrew Denton

I never imagined describing madness could be so rich, so vivid and so full of humour – Sandy’s words make me want to dance.

—Meryl Tankard, choreographer and director for stage and film

Sandy Jeffs lives her art and opens up her unique soul to us. Her writing makes us laugh, enlightens and moves us with her bewitching words. This book is a treasure and testament to her wonderful gift.

—Elena Kats-Chernin, award-winning composer