Professor Selina Tusitala Marsh, the first Commonwealth Poet Laureate, travelled to Tuvalu for the first time in August, visiting the homeland of her grandfather, the University of Auckland said.

The university released the account to mark Vaiaso o te 'Gana Tuvalu, Tuvalu Language Week, which runs in New Zealand from 26 September to 3 October.

Marsh is a poet, scholar and children's author at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland. She said she is the granddaughter of Vailei Tusitala of Niutao and Funafuti, and took from him the family name Tusitala, meaning storyteller.

She travelled to Funafuti as Commonwealth Poet Laureate and as a guest of Tuvalu's first Cultural Festival. According to the release, severe weather forced organisers to postpone the main festival to protect delegates travelling from the outer islands.

Marsh stayed on and ran a series of creative writing workshops over eight days with students, teachers, aspiring writers and community leaders.

"You grasp the stakes before you land," she said of the flight into Funafuti. "A coral atoll a few metres above a rising sea, holding a nation."

At Fetuvalu Secondary School she ran workshops with 30 participants, from senior secondary students to adults. The release said that by the end of the programme students were reading their work aloud and giving each other feedback.

At Nauti Primary School she read from her children's book Mophead and spoke about her tokotoko, the carved orator's staff she carries. Eighty children designed their own tokotoko and wrote about what it represented, the release said, with responses about coconuts, community, culture and the future of the islands as the sea rises.

Marsh also worked with the Tuvalu National Council of Women. She identified two emerging writers she believes could become Tuvalu's first entrants in the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and has offered to mentor them over the coming year.

The release said a grant from the Commonwealth Foundation paid for notebooks, pens and workshop materials, and Marsh covered her airfares and accommodation through University of Auckland research funding.

Marsh was the first Pacific person to earn a PhD in English at the university. Her books include Fast Talking PI, Tightrope and the Mophead series.

She was appointed the Commonwealth's first Poet Laureate in 2025, writing poems for major Commonwealth events and advising on creative and cultural initiatives across the network's 56 member countries.

This year's Tuvalu Language Week theme is 'Taofi mau ki tau 'gana, mo tou gaugaleo, me ko tou iloga tena', which the release translates as uphold your language and dialect, for it is your identity.