for the Games<\/p>\n
and three thousand athletes<\/p>\n
ran along its banks<\/p>\n
without looking down.<\/p>\n
The former New Zealand Poet Laureate, 2024 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow, Ahorangi\/Professor of English at the University of Auckland\/Waipapa Taumata Rau hopes the poem will land. \u201cIt\u2019s playful, it\u2019s funny \u2013 hopefully,\u201d she tells me from her home in Waiheke.<\/p>\n
Selina Tusitala Marsh. Photo \/ Sarah Gloyer, Waiheke Gulf News & Weekender<\/p>\n
Two Rivers Walk Into A Bar was commissioned by the Scottish Poetry Library and will be published in an anthology of poems themed on the Rights of Rivers for the 2026 Commonwealth Games. Ten other poets have contributed, many of them indigenous voices from across the Commonwealth: Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Jamaica, and beyond. Burn (Taggart, War Horse), recently wrote to Marsh, telling her that his family name means \u201cby the river\u201d. \u201cHe said, \u2018this is meant to be\u2019, and you know, us artists, we go with the synchronicity,\u201d says Marsh.<\/p>\n
Because of industrial pollution, the Clyde was fishless from the mid-1800s. Then, in the early 80s, Atlantic salmon returned. Now otters, herons, cormorants – all in Marsh\u2019s poem – kingfishers and sea trout have returned. It\u2019s called a \u201crecovering river\u201d. Marsh was inspired by a story of a dolphin swimming up the Clyde in 2008. A photo from the time shows the cityscape visible among grey fog and the smooth-headed dolphin casting a lonely figure in the wide river. \u201cHow sad is that? That\u2019s where that poem sprang from.\u201d Her poem ends with the porpoise \u201cthat swam into the city, like a dare\u201d.<\/p>\n
Poetry has carried the 55-year-old into unlikely places. She is the only poet to perform for two reigning British monarchs, her \u201cclaim to fame\u201d, she jokes. The 2026 Commonwealth Games is the first since Queen Elizabeth II\u2019s death, after years of almost comedic tossing between countries about who would host it, and a year into Marsh\u2019s Commonwealth role. She\u2019s using the opportunity to bring Pacific and climate voices into an arena built for sport and to the head of the Commonwealth. She sees her job as stirring the imagination and yes, sometimes stirring things up. But solving anything, she says, requires \u201ccollective action\u201d.<\/p>\n
Selina Tusitala Marsh performing at Westminster Abbey. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
The mother of three doesn\u2019t think of herself as an activist or environmentalist; she is an artist through and through and holds closely to Maya Angelou\u2019s line: \u201cA bird doesn\u2019t sing because it has the answer. A bird sings because it has a song.\u201d She explains, \u201cI try not to hang my sense of self on outcomes I can\u2019t control \u2013 that\u2019s a heavy weight to carry, and I\u2019ve watched people I love carry it until it wears them down. Maya takes me back to the supreme act of creating and finding our own song, and one by one, we can create a whole singing forest. We can\u2019t determine the output, but I don\u2019t think we\u2019re meant to as artists. We\u2019re meant to put it out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sporting arenas aren\u2019t traditionally known to court poets. Still, art and sport have increasingly converged, from the hotly debated Fifa World Cup halftime show featuring singers, dancers and Tom Cruise\u2019s much-memed motivational message. With so many eyeballs on sport, it\u2019s an ideal stage for important issues. Yet because sport is also a form of escapism, it\u2019s not where audiences expect conversations about climate change, making a poem about river rights a clever Trojan horse.<\/p>\n
Marsh uses metaphor rather than doomsday plots to open people\u2019s hearts. Climate change in the Pacific is particularly close to Marsh\u2019s heart as her whakapapa spans England, Scotland, France, Samoa and Tuvalu: the Pacific Island nation most under threat, with its highest point only 4.6m above sea level. After she performed her poem, Unity, in 2016 at Westminster Abbey for Queen Elizabeth II and other royals, Prince William said to Marsh, \u201cThey say Tuvalu will disappear in less than 30 years. It\u2019s a very serious situation. Lovely to meet you. Lovely poem.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Scotland, she will visit Tuvalu for the first time. \u201cIt\u2019s a significant trip to one of my bloodline homes.\u201d There, she\u2019s helping with a cultural festival and has offered to run writing workshops. The organiser recently emailed to say a few more students from the outer islands are interested. How many, Marsh asked. \u201cOh, about 800,\u201d came the reply.<\/p>\n
Marsh says she\u2019s evangelistic about the power of writing and is proud of never having taken a formal creative writing class before being published. \u201cI\u2019m firmly in the lane that everyone has the right to write.\u201d Another initiative in her role as Commonwealth Poet Laureate is Uncommonly You, a book that demystifies her creative process and provides writing prompts for aspiring poets.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love insight into the draft process of writers, from TS Eliot\u2019s manuscripts to Kurt Cobain\u2019s journals,\u201d she said. The book will detail how her poems take shape from \u201cvery messing writing\u201d often inspired by her daily journaling practice and launch in November during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm), where she\u2019ll perform for King Charles III for the second time this year.<\/p>\n
Selina Tusitala Marsh performs at the Arts Foundation Gala in June, 2026. Photo \/ Jinki Cambronero<\/p>\n
A sense of belonging<\/p>\n
The first time Marsh saw King Charles\u2019 predecessor, Queen Elizabeth, was in her Avondale home. A portrait of the 21-year-old monarch hung above one of the doors, placed there by Marsh\u2019s mother who had emigrated from Samoa with no English and a dream. \u201cWhen she became a citizen, the Queen symbolised her sense of belonging in this new place,\u201d Marsh explains. \u201cWe\u2019re all meaning-making machines, and she extracted what she needed to find the strength to belong in a society that saw her as different, that rejected her for not speaking with a clear English accent. I love how she made her own story out of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, like the dolphin that swam into the city like a dare, the daughter has swum straight into the heart of the Commonwealth, not to belong on its terms, but to make it listen to the Commonwealth people, particularly indigenous, in its realm.<\/p>\n
As the inaugural Commonwealth Poet Laureate, she sees the opportunity to create a space for talanoa (conversation) rather than endorse the institution of colonisation, to be \u201ca bridge, not a wall\u201d. She walks into royal spaces, slipping important messages between her stanzas. In March this year, she was commissioned by the Royal Commonwealth Society to perform \u2013 again \u2013 at Westminster Abbey in front of royals and world dignitaries. Her poem, How to Make a Commonwealth Quilt, originally talked about sewing together \u201cgilt-edged patches\u201d, reflecting on how many cultures, histories and voices of the Commonwealth are stitched together, like pieces of a quilt. The Royal Society questioned the word \u201cgilt\u201d wondering if the poet realised it sounded like \u201cguilt\u201d when spoken, she tells me, a mischievous expression on her face.<\/p>\n
Marsh told them it was a homonym \u2013 two words that sound the same but carry different meanings \u2013 but agreed to change it, staying true to her sense of herself as a bridge. \u201cI thought: there\u2019s more than one way in, and I\u2019ll find it in time.\u201d She believes everyone is doing their best with what they\u2019ve got, including the Royal Commonwealth Society.<\/p>\n
One topic that has been broached during the games is climate change, with King Charles III opening the event with a plea to prevent plastic pollution in oceans and waterways. \u201cWe have these human events, but collectively there is a race against time if we\u2019re to believe the timetable that many of the leading-edge scientists have given us,\u201d she says. Rather than feeling like we\u2019re all racing against the clock, which gives no one daily peace, she prefers to open her eyes. \u201cIt\u2019s more empowering for me to believe that if we honour the earth, if we see it, if we look down, rather than treat places as mere spaces for our human activities, that change will happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Selina Tusitala Marsh and P\u00e0draig MacAoidh (Peter Mackay), Scotland\u2019s national poet. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
Marsh\u2019s trip to Scotland is funded by the British Council New Zealand and the Pacific, who have worked with Marsh since the creation of Trouble in Paradise: Climate Change in the Pacific, an exhibition and book that toured Aotearoa and Samoa in 2024. \u201cThey\u2019ve been pushing the climate conversation along,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n
Since landing in Glasgow, she\u2019s had courtside seats for the 3×3 basketball, spoken on a podcast with Peter Mackay, Scotland\u2019s poet laureate (called a makar), embarked on a walking tour of the city, and watched Glasgow swell with athletes. \u201cThe runners fly past, all that hurry, all that hope. The river just keeps its own time underneath. My work is to kneel, not run \u2013 to get people to look down and see what\u2019s flowing here before us, and what outlasts us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"for the Games and three thousand athletes ran along its banks without looking down. The former New Zealand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[66917,1975,149286,150749,51038,39789,2550,14768,6489,33611,42,83587,49539,17154,43,40477,30878,2888,12718,6739,272248,1305,392,2022,3057,1361,40,38,41,39,272249,6123,26157,377],"class_list":["post-554396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-angela","tag-at","tag-barnett","tag-belongs","tag-commonwealth","tag-compete","tag-even","tag-every","tag-games","tag-glasgow","tag-headlines","tag-marsh","tag-medals","tag-nations","tag-news","tag-performs","tag-poem","tag-poetry","tag-rights","tag-river","tag-selina","tag-show","tag-space","tag-sport","tag-steps","tag-that","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-tusitala","tag-while","tag-words","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}