Date/Time
Date(s) - Fri 23rd Jan, 2026
7:00pm - 9:00pm
Redefining the poet / mentor relationship
Mentoring is growing increasingly popular as a support for emerging poets working towards a first collection. The traditional purpose of this is to guide, encourage and inform the poet through discussing and editing new work, highlighting publishing opportunities and addressing general concerns and queries. But how exactly can a mentoring programme help and how effective is it? Are there opportunities to reimagine it? We’ll discuss these questions and examine potential modifications which reinforce the relationship between mentor and mentee.
Mentoring can be approached as a collaborative companionship, a guided entry into ‘the carrying stream’ as Hamish Henderson imagined it – that dynamism of the poetic tradition where the traditional hierarchical structure of the relationship is redefined.
If the mentor is looked on less as a guide and more as a creative companion, then the notion of poetry as a form of privileged cultural access is challenged and a relationship which encourages generosity, empathy and accessibility is encouraged.
Join Cáit O’Neill McCullagh and John Glenday for an online discussion and reading where they will examine these issues, discuss their perspectives of the mentoring relationship and share poems which reflect on their personal experience of living with chronic illness.
Hosted by Moniack Mhor on Zoom Pro.
Tutors
Cáit O’Neill McCullagh began writing poetry, at home, near Evanton, in 2021. Her poems have been published widely in journals, magazines, anthologies, and in newspapers, including as The Scotman’s ‘Poem of the Weel’. Her lines have inspired work by contemporary artists including Helen Dennerley, Becs Boyd, and Rachel Ho, and composer Anita Mackenzie. Her debut pamphlet, ‘The Songs I sing are sisters’ was published by Driech, in 2022. Her first full-length collection, ‘The Bone Folder’, was published by Drunk Muse Press in 2024, and shortlisted in the Poetry Debut category of this year’s The Saltires. Her awards include the Saboteur Award in 2023 and McLellan Poetry Prize.
She is also on the board of Moniack Mhor, a founding member of SHIPS, and Poet in Residence for the UHI Institute for Northern Studies.
John Glenday is the author of four collections. The Apple Ghost (Peterloo Poets 1989) won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and Undark (Peterloo Poets 1995) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Grain (Picador, 2009) was also a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and shortlisted for both the Ted Hughes Award and the Griffin International Poetry Prize. The Golden Mean (Picador 2015) was shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish Poetry Book of the Year and won the 2015 Roehampton Poetry Prize. His most recent publications are a limited edition artbook in collaboration with Maria Isakova Bennett, mira (Coast to Coast to Coast 2019) and a pamphlet, The Firth (Mariscat Press 2020). His Selected Poems also came out with Picador in 2020. In 2022 he was a judge for both the Saltire Scottish First Book of the Year and the Michael Marks Poetry Award.
John is a highly experienced tutor and has facilitated numerous creative writing workshops and residential retreats including for Moniack Mhor Writers’ Centre, the Arvon Foundation, the Poetry School and the Banff Centre, Canada.
Fees
We are running this as a ‘pay as you can’ event. Please see our booking options below. By paying our standard price wherever possible you help us give people on lower incomes more opportunities to attend, thank you. Please read our Terms & Conditions for full details about our cancellation policy.
We have a limited number of free places for this event, if these are showing as not available and you need a free place to be able to access the event, please email a request to us on online@moniackmhor.org.uk, thank you.
Access
Please let us know in your booking form if you have any access requirements when working online so we can do our best to support you. For more information about access to our courses, please visit our Access page.
Terms and Conditions
Please read our Terms & Conditions before booking.