Hardly Creatures: Poems

by Rob Macaisa Colgate

An imaginative and unforgettable debut poetry collection about the joys and complexities of the disability community from 2024 Ruth Lilly fellow Rob Macaisa Colgate.

Brilliant and innovative, Rob Macaisa Colgate’s debut poetry collection, Hardly Creatures, takes the form—visually and metaphorically—of an accessible art museum. Through nine sections that act as gallery rooms, the book shepherds the reader through the radiance and mess of the disability community.

At the heart of the collection is an exploration and recognition of access intimacy. Marked with universal access symbols to guide the way, poems mimic sensory rooms, tactile replicas, benches for resting, and more; “the body of a poem” itself is reimagined through formal experimentation, as abecedarians are scrambled out of order and sestinas are pressurized into new sequences. These poems also play with pop culture allusions, social media posts, and the infinite possibilities within queer love and deep friendships. With lyrical clarity and attention to language, Hardly Creatures reaches out and offers inventive, heartfelt insights for all readers, and celebrates the disability community through the lens of a visionary new voice in poetry.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, Disability, LGBT

144 pages, Paperback

Published May 20, 2025

Reviews

[ritareadthat · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We’re hardly creatures, the way we love each other. I nod, but can’t stop thinking about the crows that love each other, the salamander that loves itself, the crows that only know caregiving, the salamander that only knows survival, every creature forever feeding whatever mouth is in front of them either born knowing how to love or picking it up down the line."

To have a serious mental health disability, as the author does (schizoaffective disorder) I can only assume, is very challenging to live with. Schizoaffective disorder is having BOTH schizophrenia and a mood disorder (either depression or bipolar disorder). I have just one of these (bipolar disorder) and I know how hard it is. I also have a mentally handicapped older sister, so I can also relate to the other aspects of the author's words. I volunteered every summer in high school at my sister's summer camp for mentally and physically disabled children. Working with kids like that changes you.

The style of poetry in this book is very stream of consciousness. At first I felt it was difficult to follow, but I tried to open my mind, loosen up, and just go with the flow. Once I freed my mind from the normal constraints that I put on it, it was then that I started understanding. I was able to appreciate what the author was saying. And most of this book is NOT structured poetry, so please do not go into this book expecting that. This is like poems mixed with memoir mixed with manic episode. It reminded me a whole lot of I'm Telling the Truth But I'm Lying by Bassey Ikpi.

The formatting in the ebook ARC I received from Net Galley was not the best, as I feel there was a specific layout that was intended for this book, but it all ran together making it a little more difficult to decipher what the author was intending with certain passages. I will certainly not hold this against the author, but I will buy a print copy of this because it deserves a place in my collection and I want to see what the author intended with the formatting.

I really enjoyed this collection and I feel the author has some important insight into living with a serious mental health diagnosis and also being a gay man. He voices his thoughts on various issues - mental health, being gay in this modern age of everyone PrEPing, healthcare and daily struggles of just - being alive. Highly recommend for anyone who wants to try to understand. He has a sharp talent that shines through despite what the universe has thrown at him. Excellent excellent.

"I am trying to learn to speak less as a way of speaking and more as a way of proving that I exist."

Many thanks to Net Galley, Tin House and the author for the ebook ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Chloe Cattaneo · Rating 5 out of 5]

“What a ridiculous way to spend time, putting words together in the wrong order, hoping it will change my life. And more ridiculous: that it does.”

Oh, my heart.

Hardly Creatures, Rob Macasia Colgate’s first collection— of what better be MANY— is creative, brilliant, fearless, just gorgeous. Reading this book made me feel like a person. Set me back alive. I’m serious, I am just absolutely done for.

“the wrongness never leaves your side, it loves you, it stays, how could you not do the same?”

[this_eel · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want really good poems about being gay and disabled and especially schizoeffective this is the book for thee. Some of these poems use unique formats with great effectiveness and he manages the push and pull between poesy/romanticism and casualness/concreteness so well. Moving and insightful and just really interesting. Perhaps one of my favorite inside insights into psychosis that I’ve read. He’s deeply relatable in his complex view of psychiatric disability: we hate it we love it and the good and bad are all parts of staying alive. I will definitely come back for more books (please publish more books).

[Michelle Graf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and Tin House for the ARC.

I loved the structure of the book, using the iconography of museum signage and verbiage to make the form a part of the poetry and its themes. It really captured the joys, sorrows, and anger of a disabled, queer life fully lived.

[Books Amongst Friends · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5

[Skylar Miklus · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is bonkers and creative and imaginative and I am so so impressed! The innovative structure of this book mirrors the layout of an accessible art museum. I loved the abecedarians in particular and the way Colgate plays on il/legibility. I'm grateful to Tin House for the ARC; available May 20, 2025!

[Alex Contreras Montesano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredible, divine, lush, serrating. My favorites were: “How to Survive,” “Fashion!,” “Abecedarian After Forgetting to Take Yesterday’s Medication,” “Self-Portrait Without Sense of Self,” and “Hopescrolling.”

[Elena Macdonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was a gift

[k-os · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece! So formally inventive, so full of love, so cohesive as a book project. All the prizes!

[Vincent Antonio Rendoni · Rating 5 out of 5]

A class-of-its-own collection that will make you rethink access, intimacy, and disability. A book that was missing from the world. Highly recommend.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the coolest experimental lit I've ever come across. Notice that's all encompassing; I didn't stick to poetry for the scope. If I'm calling it experimental and shouldn't be, my bad. But it feels experimental, bc I've never seen/read/experienced anything else like it and have never been so pleasantly surprised by a collection of poetry.

Some of the emotions this brought up were visceral and—unfortunately for anyone who knows this—extremely accurate. The emotions conveyed in the in the situations I couldn't identify with—still knocked the wind out of me. I'm certain part of this has been my looking in the wrong places and/or not hard enough, but it seems like 2025 has started to grant visibility to art touching on the disparity in life experiences between the currently able and disabled (fking FINALLY). It's so cool you literally can't forget about it during Hardly Creatures, every time it starts floating to the back of your mind there's a new page with its necessary symbols.

I am DYING to see this in print, because I'm sure a screen can't do the graphics or formatting any justice. Plusss this is def going to be a re-reader for me; I'm sure I missed things the first time around that I'd be able appreciate with another go.

I highly highly suggest this for anyone who enjoyed Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa (translated by Polly Barton) or Walking Practice by Dolki Min. Or vice verse! Enjoy this? Try those, too! But be warned they're a little...weirder lol

{Thank you bunches to Rob Macaisa Colgate, Tin House and NetGalley for the DRC in exchange for my honest review!}

[Burgi Zenhaeusern · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is so much to discover in the interconnectedness and myriad subtexts of Hardly Creatures, from the cover to the very notes and acknowledgements, and everything in between! No detail too small to play its part. Read and read again, look, go back and forth between the the "exhibits." And to frame the collection as a visit to a gallery is brilliant in more than one way—its subtext of feeling watched/exposed but also watching oneself as a disabled person names just one. I especially loved how each "exhibit" is introduced by a quasi cento made from the poems/"pieces" in it. The sometimes modified access signs in the upper righthand corner of each poem add another layer of associations. Hardly Creatures is unlike anything I have read even though it borrows many traditional forms, but to free-play, resulting in some wonderful erasures for example. The collection combines advocacy (incl. for one's own being), satirical irony, deep humanity, and love of life and community with great poetic sensibility and imagination. Rob Macaisa Colgate is a poet/playwright/and whatever else he'll put his pen to to watch!

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. A million times, wow. Tin House has yet to fail me, but Rob Macaisa Colgate's poetry collection, Hardly Creatures, absolutely blew me away. If you only pick up one book of poetry this year, may it be this one. These poems are a tribute to love and friendship and intimacy and access; they are an ode to disability. The author offers up vulnerability in spades, and we, the readers, are gifted with writing that is both intensely personal, while also feeling accessible and relatable. While many of the individual poems will stick with me for a long, long time (Hopescrolling, Eli Interprets, and Three Translations of an Email to My Boss immediately come to mind), I also feel that the book's greatest strength lies in the *collection* of poems--read one after another==as they come together to create a fully immersive gallery experience.

Thank you to Tin House and NetGalley for my advanced copy.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems arranged as if it were an accessible art museum. Themes of disability, queerness, survival, and mental health.

from Hardly Creatures: "We're hardly creatures, the way we love each other. / I nod, but can't stop thinking about the crows // who love each other, the salamander that loves itself, / the crows who only know caregiving, the salamander / who only knows survival, every creature forever feeding / whatever mouth is in front of them // either born knowing how to love / or picking it up down the line."

from Like Candy: "Gay people will always love each other / like Death is dancing with us. We will / get him kicked out of the bar then go / eat bodega sandwiches in the park. / Every light-up floor flashes / with the special kind of cherishing / that comes with the end of a plague."

[Karen Carlson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A couple of weeks ago this tease from Electric Literature flashed through my Bluesky timeline: “The Poems in Hardly Creatures Take You Through an Accessible Art Museum / Rob Macaisa Colgate’s formally inventive collection creates a world of care and intimacy.” I rarely read poetry – I think I’ve bought no more than two poetry collections in the past five years – but this was something I couldn’t resist. And, of course, I found it confusing and puzzling – but in an intriguing way, a way that said, “Look closer.” I did. It was worth it.
FMI see my blog post at A Just Recompense.

[Jo-z K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you Tin House for the AARC. This collection is a striking example of how form can make and contribute to meaning, and how we as readers can take poems as an invitation to be altered when we by step into a poem or a poetry collection. These poems work to reveal many of the voices often sidelined by society. As a neurodivergent reader, some poems made me feel seen. As an able bodied person, many poems revealed a corner of human existence that deserves so much light and must often make its own. These poems both bask in and hide from the often too bright light of what it means to be alive in the world. They dip in and out of discomfort and revelation. As a poet, these poems made me want to play with form, and make my own poems into spaces that a reader might step inside.

[Sigrid A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Colgate's collection plays with form and visual symbols to recreate how people with disabilities navigate the world. From access symbols to "word salad" representing the speaker's psychosis, Colgate draws the reader in to their characters' world. Eli, the speaker's partner, appears at the edges of Colgate's poems, always on the outside but wanting to be let in. Eli's anguish comes through as clearly as the experiences of the other characters in the collection.

For those of you who don't think of yourselves as poetry people, check this collection out anyway. The poems are accessible, even though there's a lot of formal experimentation going on.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed how this book of poems is crafted into an interactive museum-- a museum of the poet, of each of us, of humans existing right now. Sometimes poems with pop culture references are off putting, but being of this moment, they felt especially lived in and cozy because I had access to that language and space. I think the interactive museum format invites the feelings one has at a museum, to poke and prod, to touch and not to touch, to see some versions of some truths.

Thanks for the ARC

[Stew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have split feelings on this collection. On one hand, the poetry had a very unique structure and an incredibly uncommon subject matter (disability), which I enjoyed. On the other hand, much of it felt less like poetry and more like random thoughts and musings, which tended to drone on. Half was excellent, half was not. Overall worth the short read.

[Jalen Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous collection. Plays with form in really inventive ways, loved the structure of the book, and Colgate is really able to balance so many different subjects so effortlessly. I found myself surprised in new ways, reading this.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

How to Survive propels this book of poetry to an easy 5 star rating. Poetry isn’t my normal reading genre, but I’m so grateful I gave this one a go- creative, interesting, enjoyable way to see different perspectives through poetry. Excellent.

[Shannon Wolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Don’t go, disorder. I remember when you used to be a sign of joy.”

Lovely, striking, memorable.

[SAM E · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cathartic and cutting.

[Ayanna Florence · Rating 5 out of 5]

perfection. raw. honest. i am grateful.

[Elizabeth Nalley · Rating 3 out of 5]

it felt like this was doing something Meaningful but I didn't get it; felt like my failing, not the poetry's.

[Tutankhamun18]

DNF

Love the concept, but could not connect or enjoy the writing of it at all.

[ava · Rating 4 out of 5]

really enjoyed the framing of the poems as a walk through an art gallery

[Sara Grace Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very stream of consciousness

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

so much interesting stuff with form and structure happening here!

[Raino Isto · Rating 5 out of 5]

The concept of this overall is fantastic, and the poems themselves are excellent, even free of the conceptual framework. Will definitely assign some poems from this to my museum studies courses.