Jacobson's first poetry collection was the 1995 collection Hair and Skin and Teeth, which contains a series of poems addressed to her parents and grandmother. In a review in Australian Book Review, Ivor Indyk wrote that her poems were well-constructed and contained an interesting balance between themes of familial devotion and exploration of the painful aspects of these relationships.[6]
Jacobson's 2012 work The Sunlit Zone is a verse novel of speculative fiction. It was originally written as her PhD thesis.[7] In Australian Book Review, Peter Kenneally wrote that there was some immaturity to the work and that it told more than it showed, but that it had a strong overall impact on the reader.[7] In The Australian, Liam Davison wrote that the novel had an engaging story and that its verse had an "elegiac quality" and "mythic impetus".[8] In the Mascara Literary Review, Linda Weste wrote that the work had a "compelling narrative" and "meticulous poetic rhythm".[9] The work was shortlisted for the Unpublished Manuscript Award at the 2009 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and was shortlisted for the 2013 Stella Prize.[7][10]
In 2014, Jacobson published her second poetry collection South in the World. The collection explores multiple themes, including childhood and relationships with horses and other animals.[11] In a review in The Sydney Morning Herald, Geoff Page wrote that the poems were driven by intense emotion, but that they were at times too direct and led to a "diaristic" rather than a poetic effect. He also noted the range of themes explored in the collection, including Jewish issues and the Holocaust, the Black Saturday bushfires, and its inclusion of a "compelling" set of erotic poems.[11] In Australian Book Review, Sarah Holland-Batt described the collection as having a "powerful interplay between the figurative and literal" and as being characterised by its "imaginative empathy".[12]
