Commonwealth Poet Laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh travelled to Scotland this year with the support of British Council New Zealand and the Pacific, taking part in events around the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games, which ran from 23 July to 2 August. Collaborating with British Council Scotland, we facilitated her participation in a series of talks and performances presented with the Scottish Poetry Library as part of the Games Festival's cultural programme.
One highlight was the launch of the Commonwealth River Rights Poetry Anthology at Watershed at the Briggait on 1 August. Selina performed her poem Two Rivers Walk Into A Bar alongside Scottish actor Tam Dean Burn, a piece that weighs up why the Whanganui River in Aotearoa has held legal personhood since 2017, while the River Clyde running through Glasgow does not. She was joined at the launch by Peter Mackay Scotland's Makar, or national poet, poet RJ Arkhipov and a selection of Scotland's Young Makars - poets at the start of their careers.
Selina also recorded a podcast at the Scottish Poetry Library with Peter Mackay, a wide-ranging conversation that opened with a reading of her poem Tusitala, meaning "storyteller" in Samoan, and the story of how she came to carry that name. Her hand-carved tokotoko, a talking stick she brings to public events, made its usual appearance too. You can listen to the full conversation here.
Selina was appointed the inaugural Commonwealth Poet Laureate in 2025, a new two-year post, created for the first time in the Commonwealth's 75-year history. In the role, she writes original poetry for major Commonwealth occasions, including Commonwealth Day and Heads of Government meetings.
Selina was New Zealand's Poet Laureate from 2017 to 2019, the first Pasifika woman to hold that title. She was also the first Pacific Islander to earn a PhD in English from the University of Auckland, where she now lectures in Pacific poetry and creative writing. Her published collections include Fast Talking PI, Dark Sparring and Tightrope, and her graphic memoir series Mophead swept New Zealand's book awards, including the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year. Her heritage is Samoan, Tuvaluan, English, Scottish and French, and she was born and grew up in Auckland.
This isn't the first time Selina has worked with British Council. Her poem Girl from Tuvalu featured in the Trouble in Paradise: Climate Change in the Pacific book, co-produced by British Council New Zealand and the Pacific and Auckland University of Technology to accompany the climate change photography exhibition of the same name. The exhibition itself toured New Zealand before being shown as an official side event at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa, and the book was first published around CHOGM in 2024.