“Colgate radically reenvisions how a text might support its reader… [his] generous and perceptive poems make an impact.” — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Revelatory and frank… An honest exploration of the intersections of power and fallibility, of interdependence of care and community.” — Lit Hub

“Hardly Creatures shows readers the limitless possibilities poetry has to reimagine and reach new heights.” — Chicago Review of Books, a Must Read Book of May 2025

“Inventive and creative in approach… Rob Macaisa Colgate writes about his disability community with a deep sense of kinship, joy and honesty, providing an illuminating experience for readers.” — San Francisco Chronicle

“[E]xciting, sometimes shocking… Colgate’s poems attend, delightfully and exceptionally, to extraordinary bodies and to shared physical needs… [an] astonishing first book. ” — Stephanie Burt for The New York Times, a NYT Editor’s Choice

• While I have the utmost love, respect, and appreciation for Stephanie Burt and her kind words, unfortunately I cannot endorse this venue. Instead of reading this review, spend some time at newyorkwarcrimes.com to learn more about the publication’s well-documented history of imperialist, racist, and genocidal biases built into their editorial structure, and consider joining the NYT boycott.

“A collection unlike any I have ever encountered before. Part primer, part activated art space, part personal/community inventory, part lyric collaboration with mental illness— this book activates new zones between disability studies and poetry, allowing readers spaces for rest, recognition, and reimagination inside its dazzling and varied forms. An extraordinary document in care, mutual aid, and access.” — Claudia Rankine

“An impressive titan of formalism and radical inclusion.” — Electric Literature, A Most Anticipated Debut Poetry Collection of 2025

“Colgate is a lyrical mastermind. I could reread these poems until the ends of days.” — Debutiful, A Best Debut Book of 2025

“Queer poems full of formal play? Yes, please!” — Autostraddle, A Most Anticipated Queer Book of May 2025

“Never before have I experienced a book of poems that cares this firmly and boldly, this inventively and fully for its communities and for its reader… I felt my entire world shift” — Chen Chen

“Full of vulnerability and humor and lyrical play… Hardly Creatures is a beautiful space I want to return to again and again” — Jane Wong

“With forms inventive and vexing, and content both ludicrous and deeply serious, the poems…manufacture a network of interweaving threads of the disabled experience: from the beautiful, the tender, the ugly, the violent, and everything in between.” — Gabrielle Grace Hogan for The Rumpus

“With deep sincerity juxtaposed with a lightness only someone who has faced the dark can truly embody… His execution is bold, authentic, and ingenious: we are not only led to his waters, but shown how to drink, gently and with care.” — Lizz Dawson for Foglifter

“Surprising and innovative, Hardly Creatures encompasses anger, hope, despair, and wonder in a dazzling display. Wide-ranging in tone and topic, these poems lead by example, showing us how the world could be, how a book could be… More than poetry, it is possibility. Colgate shows us the potential of art that not only allows for us, but actively welcomes us into its fold.” — Brittany Micka-Foos for North American Review

“One of the rare collections that so accurately captures the permanent multimedia-hood of modern life… there’s this perpetual feeling that all is accounted and cared for.” — Jalen Giovanni Jones for Electric Literature

“The architecture of Hardly Creatures offers just such a space of belonging and generously invites readers inside.” — Jess Libow for Chicago Review of Books