Clyde, the mascot of the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games, took its name from the city’s famous river, while the 2026 mascot, Finnie, is named after the iconic Finnieston Crane on the river’s bank. In the decade since those 2014 Games, we have witnessed the growth of a rights-based approach to nature – and rivers in particular – with pioneering movements in New Zealand, Colombia and India.
Nature writer Robert Macfarlane observed that: “our fate flows with rivers, and always has” (Is a River Alive? ). In response to Glasgow hosting the 2021 UN Climate Conference, Scotland’s national poet Kathleen Jamie wrote a poem called What the Clyde Said, After COP26. She imagines the River Clyde as a living being, giving it a voice: “Think of me as a long, level / liquid ear gliding slowly by / I heard the world’s words / the pleas of peoples born.”
As the Games return to Glasgow in July 2026, the Scottish Poetry Library has teamed up with Louise Welsh and Jude Barber, the producers of Who Owns The Clyde? podcast, the Commonwealth Foundation and British Council Scotland to commission poems from writers across the Commonwealth that speak to theme of the Right of Rivers. Below, you can read the poems and listen to and watch recordings at the foot of each work.
The anthology pamphlet and showcase event at The Briggait in Glasgow on 1 August are supported by the Glasgow 2026 Festival Fund. Tickets are available from the Watershed programme’s eventbrite.
Will this river offer a song?
