Hardly Creatures, by Rob Macaisa Colgate, is a fascinating formalist experiment. “[It] takes the form – visually and metaphorically – of an accessible art museum.” In the poem “History of Display,” Colgate opens with a quote by bioethics professor emerita Rosemarie Garland-Thomson: “[The] history of disability in the western world is in part the history of being on display, of being visually conspicuous while politically and socially erased.” In many ways, the disabled community could be said to resemble a museum artifact: on display, but politically impotent. One recalls the numerous stolen artifacts in museums attached to interpretive text that reinforces an outdated Master Narrative. It also should be noted that common stereotypes associated with museums have them seen as elitist exclusionary white cubes festooned with incomprehensible text boxes. (Modern and contemporary art museums bear the biggest brunt for this stereotype. Encyclopedic museums bear the stigma of whitewashing and marginalization of non-white, non-heterosexual, and non-bourgeois groups.)

Colgate, through the use of accessibility symbology, turns what would be a standard collection of poems into a simulacra of a museum visit. Poems reflect the objects and experiences encountered in the museum space. He refracts it through his personal experiences and his interactions with classmates in his studies in “critical disability.” Critical disability, like ethnic studies or queer theory, is yet another lens by which to experience the world and question its paradigms. Because Colgate has schizoaffective disorder, it influences the poetry he produces and how he experiences the world. It also challenges assumptions about disability and its “fixability.” If he didn’t have this disorder, would be still be the same Rob Macaisa Colgate? This conundrum raises issues of essentialism, but also of prejudicial assumptions.

Disability, like gender, shouldn’t be confined to simple binary assumptions. “Well, if he has schizoaffective disorder, can’t he just a take a pill to fix that?” Sometimes – one can’t universally assume – that fixing something is as simple as an on/off switch. Fixability can be a fluid state. (One should also recall psychiatry’s complicity in deeming homosexuality a mental illness and the barbaric practice of “conversion therapy” to “fix gay people.”) In these poems, we witness Colgate struggle with his disability, but also his communion with his fellow “crip kindred” in both celebratory moments and moments of political solidarity. Instead of being objects of ridicule or pity, Colgate has become part of a generation that seeks empowerment and recognition as full members of society.

Hardly Creatures bears the subtitle “A Gallery of Our Own.” The volume is divided into sections akin to exhibition galleries. Section titles proceed from “Entryway” to “Access Guide” to “Medical Portraits” and beyond. Above every poem are symbols (explained at the beginning of the book with the “Access Legend”) that create a textual-visual grammar, a kind of helpful interpretive guide. As Colgate asserts, “We deserve more than poems merely about disability; we deserve poems that meet our needs, needs that we may not have realized we even have.” The poetry he creates is both confessional and politically engaged, despairing yet stubbornly hopeful. He translates this hopefulness into a real-time chronicle of social media engagement in “Hopescrolling.” Instead of the usual doomscrolling on social media, the poem lists an inventory of positive actions and individuals.

A disco ball hangs from the IV drip of a

teenager with gastroparesis. I eat through

my heart and I’m absolutely thriving.

Colgate renders schizoaffective disorder into prose with “Three Translations of an Email to My Boss.” The first is written in stilted, overcomplicated business-ese:

Dear Heather,

I sincerely regret the necessity of composing this email, the basis of which I understand presents inequitable consequences for the foremost commitment we maintain to our mission of collective care, interdisciplinary development, and critical ideation-action processes.

The second email is more casual, almost flippant:

Hi Heather,

Sorry, this sucks, and I feel bad missing things bc our project rn is legitimately rly cool and important.

The third challenges traditional notions of coherence and intelligibility:

Heathereatherer,

sorry sorry the good thing and us are good things and things and good and yes we have to have have to and help yes Rob not so Rob but is Rob and will Rob just is being right now […]

The poem “The Body is Not an Apology / Except for Mine Sometimes,” he mines the contradictions and paradoxes that make existence such a challenge.

When the crow dies the vultures must eat it.

When disability dies I must bring it back from the dead

so I can keep being myself. When gender dies I must find a way

to remain fabulous. One thing about psychosis is that the physics

are fabulous. This is perhaps a problem. I should learn more

about problems. Let the sickness fill me so I might live full.

Colgate confronts these “problems” yet he yearns to remain fabulous. How can one overcome the challenges of disability without shaving down the edges of one’s personality? In Hardly Creatures, Colgate exhibits how one can celebrate one’s individuality in all its strange kinky weirdness without sacrificing oneself into becoming a dull gray blob of pharmacological blandness.

Hardly Creatures and The Relativity of Living Well explore the circumstances of living as a disabled LGBTQ+ person of color. Ali and Colgate both share complicated and messy perspectives on the world today. At the same time, they celebrate their unique lives with fellow “crip kindred,” forging a vibrant community, united in solidarity and politically angry, not willing to back down to the forces of mediocrity, hatred, and bigotry.