Poetry Reading and Book Signing with Rob Macaisa Colgate
Date: Monday, June 2nd
​Time:  5:00 - 6:30PM
Location: Francine Kelly Gallery at Featherstone Center for the Arts
Fee: free
ASL interpretation will be provided

Please join us in celebrating the publication of HARDLY CREATURES, the debut poetry collection of 2024 Ruth Lily Fellow Rob Macaisa Colgate! 

Called “Dazzling. . . . An extraordinary document in care, mutual aid, and access” by poet Claudia Rankine, 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.

​The reading will take place in The Francine Kelly Gallery in Featherstone's Art Barn followed by a Q&A and book signing. Books will be available for purchase from Edgartown Books.

Rob Macaisa Colgate is a disabled, bakla, Filipino American poet from Evanston, Illinois. He received an MFA in poetry and critical disability studies from UT Austin. Hardly Creatures (Tin House) is his debut collection. Poems from this collection appear or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Sewanee Review, Best New Poets, New England Review, The Margins, and elsewhere. A former Fulbright scholar, Rob currently serves as the managing poetry editor at Foglifter.

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