Corbenic Poetry Path
7 April 2026
Creative Development Officer Taylor Strickland writes about the 10th anniversary of a unique poetry path
Jon Plunkett’s normally warm Belfast accent cools. Over a call, he reveals the more challenging aspect to his role as director of Corbenic Camphill Community, a registered charity that aids adults with learning disabilities through an emphasis on creativity and environmental stewardship. Recently a local authority shorted their funding pledge for the next financial year. So, yesterday involved calling family of residents, he says, who may lose their place here. He says this is the hardest part of his job.
I express hope for a better outcome and we transition to lighter subjects. A new addition to the team, I serve as Creative Development Officer to help promote Corbenic’s Poetry Path. Located in Scotland’s stunning Highland Perthshire, the Path meanders through uplands, woodlands, and riverside, featuring some of the country’s most notable poets, among them Kathleen Jamie, Peter Mackay and John Glenday. The Path winds through sculpture and installation, enacting place-based, environmental approaches to public art. Indeed, access is free to the public, though donations are encouraged. Visitors engage with much-loved work, but they also learn more about the care community by glimpsing the farm and daily activities of staff and residents.
The Path, now celebrating its 10th year, was the vision of Plunkett, himself a poet. There is something numinous moves beneath the leafy surface of Corbenic, and evidently Plunkett has communed with it, whatever it is. Yet his vision outgrows the Path. He’s pioneered a care approach that incorporates poetry, finding its mode of expression helps residents confront emotions within a social environment they wouldn’t have the opportunity to leverage otherwise. Crucially, although residents do engage with well-known poetry, they actively workshop poetry written by peers. Once a week, facilitated by Plunkett, and often with guest speakers who are themselves accomplished poets, they learn to navigate writing’s delicate task as well as perform. For residents, greater confidence results from poetry practice. Their range of disabilities is assumed to challenge their capacity to use language in the way required for poetry, but Plunkett’s workshop, if anything, demonstrates opposite. Concise, sincere verse has found its way onto the Path, alongside literary luminaries, and into a new anthology, Shout, available at the Scottish Poetry Library, Corbenic’s shop in Dunkeld, and elsewhere. In addition to Shout, the Corbenic Poetry Path anthology provides readers a keepsake of the Path experience, with curated photographs and poetry.
Both books, in addition to the Path itself, signal a commitment to the arts in their own right, but also in the care sector. Purchase of these books goes straight to the organisation, helping defray Path maintenance costs and supporting care work. We have just opened a pristine event space, lovingly titled ‘The Barn’, to facilitate our growing events calendar. We organically farm and were recently approved to harvest solar credits from panel installation. It all exists for the residents, to reinforce their sense of community. While the national care system struggles, Corbenic remains a model for excellence. We welcome you.