Rob Macaisa Colgate

HARDLY CREATURES won the Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry 😭😭😭 thank you endlessly @chicagorevbooks @mbwwelch and the entire panel of chirb editors and incredible Chicago booksellers an absolute gift of a night with the fantastic winners and finalists, most generous presenters, and lots of new friends. Chicago is the best city in the world and to have this book recognized by the community couldn’t mean more to me 🩷💛🦎 IDs in alt!

HARDLY CREATURES is out! Thank you @tin_house 😭 and everyone who made this possible who i hope ive thanked enough over the past year 😭 and bestie @gabriellegracehogan who interviewed me about the book in @the_rumpus 😭 l1nk in the l1nk place ID: rob ecstatically bathing in copies of HARDLY CREATURES, and the intro to his interview with gabbie in the rumpus, and an awed gratitude

my verse drama MY LOVE IS WATER is out today 🌊🌊🌊 😭😭😭 party 4 u by charli xcx meets liability by lorde meets filipina nurses in a psych ward i couldn’t be more grateful for everyone who has supported this strange beast i wrote when i was younger and very done with my own melodrama, especially for my editors at @uglyducklingpresse who showed me how to love this play when i was content to never let it see the light of day 🎭 you can get your copy from UDP (in my leengks), directly from me, or from the wonderful booksellers on my tour! ID: me reading from MLIW at the UDP SPRING launch party, me holding the book itself in my hands feeling awe and gratitude, me with juliana at the book launch, the generous blurbs from felicia and chad, and some scans of veryyyyyy early messy rough notes on the verse drama written in 2021

Tomorrow at 2pm ET: Filmmaker Xinyan Yu will take over our IG account for an IG Live poetry reading and conversation featuring poets Cindy Tran, Jennifer Chang, and Rob Macaisa Colgate. Join us! The event celebrates the premiere of Xinyan’s new documentary short film ‘Cindy Tran: From Here to Here,’ part of our In The Making series with PBS American Masters, which premieres this Thursday, April 30 on the PBS YouTube Channel. ‘From Here to Here’ follows poet Cindy Tran as she creates works that bridge personal memories and shared experiences, reflecting on childhood, parental expectations, and societal stigmas around Asian-American identity.

How do poets sustain a life in writing? These #WritingTips from 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize longlisted poets move between living and writing: rest and rigour, listening and making, patience and surprise. Swipe for Part 1 in this series, with advice from: ✨Gbenga Adesina (@_gbengaadesina ) ✨Daniel Borzutzky & Alec Schumacher ✨Rob Macaisa Colgate (@swing.sets ) ✨Marissa Davis (@marissabd242 ) ✨Aracelis Girmay (@aracelisxgirmay ) Which tips resonate with you the most? Artwork: Detail of Still Life with Books and a Violin, Jan Davidsz. de Heem, 1628, Oil on panel, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons #GriffinPoetryPrize #WritingTips #PoetryLife #AmWriting PoetryCommunity

✨Listen to Rob Macaisa Colgate read “Hardly Creatures” from his eponymous collection, longlisted for the 2026 #GriffinPoetryPrize. ✨Rob Macaisa Colgate is a disabled, bakla, Filipino American poet from Evanston, Illinois. A 2025 National Endowment for the Arts (@neaarts ) Fellow, he received an MFA in poetry and critical disability studies from UT Austin (@utaustintx ). ✨Poems from his debut collection 𝙃𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙡𝙮 𝘾𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚𝙨 appear in The American Poetry Review (@american_poetry_review ), The Sewanee Review (@sewaneereview ), Best New Poets, New England Review (@newenglandreview ), The Margins, and elsewhere. A former Fulbright scholar, Rob currently serves as the managing poetry editor at Foglifter (@foglifterpress ). ✨The five shortlisted books will be announced on Wednesday, April 22. ✨The international Griffin Poetry Prize winner will be announced at the Readings to be held at Koerner Hall (@theroyalconservatory ) in Toronto on Wednesday, June 3, and will be awarded $130,000. The other shortlisted finalists will each receive $10,000. ✨Tickets are now on sale and can be purchased at the box office of Koerner Hall, 273 Bloor Street West or online (link in bio). ✨Learn more about our longlisted poets and their collections on our website! Background Artwork: @TorontoInkCompany #2026GriffinPoetryPrize #RobMacaisaColgate #GriffinPoetryPrize

“as if sleep is a game / we play, as if hunger is incidental every day at lunch.” 📖 Read “Hardly Creatures” by Rob Macaisa Colgate (@swing.sets ), from his eponymous, #2026GriffinPoetryPrize longlisted collection, on our website. The poem is paired here with 𝘿𝙖𝙞𝙡𝙮 𝙍𝙞𝙩𝙪𝙖𝙡𝙨 (2022; beeswax, wax, plaster, resin, and bronze casting) by @carla.sierra.suarez , from the exhibition 𝙖𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙘𝙪𝙧𝙖, curated by Max Ferguson (@vivelarevolution1976 ) at @tangled_arts . Here is what Rob Macaisa Colgate shared about this art pairing: “Tangled is a disability arts gallery in Toronto where I used to be poet-in-residence, and their show 𝙖𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙘𝙪𝙧𝙖 was what made me start considering how to translate visual arts accessibility into literary arts. The artwork by Carla Sierra Suarez displays a plaster replica of a medication blister pack, broken in a jagged diagonal line through the middle. In being tactile-friendly for folks who are blind/low-vision or otherwise prefer touch over their other senses, the art is both about disability and accessible in experience. In 𝙃𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙡𝙮 𝘾𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚𝙨, I remain curious about how disability poetics can embody not just poems about disability, but poems that make themselves accessible to readers of all abilities.” @tin_house #GriffinPoetryPrize.#RobMacaisaColgate #HardlyCreatures #TinHouse #DisabilityPoetics

✨Congratulations once again to Rob Macaisa Colgate (@swing.sets ), whose debut collection 𝙃𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙡𝙮 𝘾𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚𝙨 (@tin_house ) is longlisted for the 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize! ✨”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.” —Tin House ✨The five shortlisted books will be announced on Wednesday, April 22. ✨The international Griffin Poetry Prize winner will be announced at the Readings to be held at Koerner Hall (@theroyalconservatory ) in Toronto on Wednesday, June 3, and will be awarded $130,000. The other shortlisted finalists will each receive $10,000. ✨Tickets are now on sale and can be purchased at the box office of Koerner Hall, 273 Bloor Street West or online (link in bio). ✨Learn more about our longlisted poets and their collections on our website! Artwork: @TorontoInkCompany #2026GriffinPoetryPrize #RobMacaisaColgate #GriffinPoetryPrize

✨𝙃𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙡𝙮 𝘾𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚𝙨 by Rob Macaisa Colgate is longlisted for the 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize! Congratulations to @swing.sets and @tin_house ! ✨Judges Andrea Cote (@andreacote27 ), Luke Hathaway, and Major Jackson (@poetmajorjackson ) each read 461 books of poetry, including 34 translations from 19 languages, submitted by 219 publishers from 42 different countries. ✨The five shortlisted books will be announced on Wednesday, April 22. ✨The international Griffin Poetry Prize winner will be announced at the Readings to be held at Koerner Hall (@theroyalconservatory ) in Toronto on Wednesday, June 3, and will be awarded $130,000. The other shortlisted finalists will each receive $10,000. ✨Tickets are now on sale and can be purchased at the box office of Koerner Hall, 273 Bloor Street West or online (link in bio). ✨Learn more about our longlisted poets and their collections on our website! Artwork: @TorontoInkCompany Photo Credit: Felicia Byron #2026GriffinPoetryPrize #RobMacaisaColgate #GriffinPoetryPrize

Join us as we welcome poet Samyak Shertok to celebrate his new collection, No Rhododendron. Samyak will be joined by local poets Rob Macaisa Colgate and IS Jones, reading from their own debut collections, Hardly Creatures and Bloodmercy. Part elegy, part poetry of witness, and part poetry of exile, No Rhododendron is a lament to the poet-speaker’s father and fatherland and a grief-wrought love letter to his mother and mother tongue. The collection is haunted by an existential question about Shertok’s oral mother tongue, Tamang: How do you write about a language that has no script? April 17th at 6:30. RSVP appreciated! Masks required and provided. Live closed captioning provided.

have i ever promoted a reading on time. have i ever responded to a message or email. ugh. anyway! come see me rose and em read some work through UIC! next tuesday 3/17 6pm at Madison Street Books, the madison square garden of bookstores with madison in the name 🩷 ID: cute cute pink poster with details rewritten in alt

chicago, we are reading poems next Friday Feb 27 w besties @gabriellegracehogan and @swing.sets and besties @samforbreakfast and @chenchenwrites ! we would love to see you there @wcfbook , we are gonna get so silly, this reading is for FUN and FRIENDSHIP 🩷 ID: two posters for the same event, The Queer Magic of Friendship Poetry Extravaganza with Gabbie Sam Chen and Rob!! 7pm on 2/27 at Women and Children First in Andersonville reposted w correct date lol