In Hardly Creatures, Rob Macaisa Colgate invites readers into a poetic museum where familiar forms, stories, and perspectives are transformed through imagination, experimentation, and empathy. Across nine interconnected sections, the collection gives voice to experiences that are often overlooked, celebrating the richness, complexity, and creativity of the disability community. Through innovative forms, pop culture references, and deeply personal reflections on identity, love, friendship, and belonging, Colgate demonstrates poetry’s power to make the unseen visible and the unheard heard.
Like this year’s Poetry Writing & Performance Challenge, Hardly Creatures encourages us to step beyond our own perspectives and inhabit the voices, stories, and experiences of others. The collection reimagines what a poem can be and whose stories deserve to be centered, inviting readers and writers alike to explore fresh viewpoints, challenge assumptions, and discover new possibilities through dramatic voice and performance. As you craft your own original poem, consider how Colgate’s work uses imagination and perspective-taking to reveal hidden truths and bring new life to familiar narratives.
Read more about Rob Macaisa Colgate, and purchase Hardly Creatures.
Awards
Winning students will be notified by email and will have their written work and performance video published on the NEHS Museletter blog. All winning students will be candidates to receive Creative Challenge Champion prizes at the end of the year.
Eligibility
Applicants must be NEHS student members enrolled in a school with an active NEHS chapter.
Submission Requirements
- Inspired by Rob Macaisa Colgate’s “We Do Not Enter the Gallery”, from Hardly Creatures, students must write and perform an original poem that explores a space, community, or experience through the lens of belonging, exclusion, access, or connection. Participants may focus on a physical, emotional or imagined space. They should consider who is welcomed there, who is overlooked, what barriers exist, and what it means to find or create a place where one feels seen and understood. Poets are encouraged to experiment with voice, structure, repetition, and form to convey their ideas.
- Students must then make a high-quality recording of themselves performing their poem.
Submission Process
- All submissions must be made via the NEHS AwardSpring platform during the Fall Awards Cycle.
- Student members must upload a Microsoft Word file (.doc/.docx) of the poem written by the applicant.
- Student members must upload video of the poem being performed by the author (the sound quality must be high) in the AwardSpring platform in .MOV or .MP4 format. Any videos that cannot be immediately accessed by our evaluation team will be disqualified from the competition.
- Applicants must complete demographic data questions prior to submitting their documentation.
- All student writers must include a 150-word (max.) third-person biography and high-resolution portrait photo.
- Applicants must agree that they are willing to provide a written report and photos detailing the impact the creative process and award has had on them, which can be used by NEHS to promote this and other opportunities in future years should they win an award.
Evaluation Process
All submissions will be evaluated by at least three members of the NEHS evaluation team.
The written part of the submission will be evaluated against a rubric containing (but not limited to) the following categories
- Message
- Use of conventions
- Form
- Technique
- Originality
The audio-visual part of the submission will be evaluated against a rubric containing (but not limited to) the following categories
- Voice and articulation
- Memory and accuracy
- Quality of presentation
Poetry Writing & Performance Resources
Videos of performance poetry and tips on performance techniques (Button Poetry)
