Manchester City of Literature is excited to introduce our judging panel for this year’s Slamovision competition. These four talented creatives, all hailing from Manchester’s vibrant spoken word scene, will be tasked with the difficult decision of selecting a poet to represent Manchester in a bid to win the ultimate poetry crown once again.

Joining the panel as our most recent Manchester representative and 2023 winner of Slamovision is Esther Koch, a multiple slam winning spoken word and page poet from Salford. She is a BBC Radio1 Xtra Words First finalist and is published in Own It! London’s accompanying anthology Use Word’s First (2019). With her words, she closed the Team GB homecoming ceremony at Wembley Stadium in 2021 and performed her commissioned poem “Manchester is alive, I can assure you” at the One Young World 2022 summit in Manchester. In 2023, her poetry pamphlet “Hoarfrost On Our Lips” was exhibited and performed alongside artwork at Manchester gallery Paradise Works. She has produced work for festivals such as Sounds from The Other City, The Ted Hughes Festival, Manchester International Festival, Resistance Is My Mother Tongue and Cabaret for Freedom. She also works closely with the Untold Orchestra to create collaborative poetry and music events.

Joining Esther is the incredible Jay Mitra (they/he), a British Indian punk poet, multi slam champion, and freelance journalist from Yorkshire, currently based in London. They were selected as one of Apples & Snakes’ 40 Future Voices in poetry and were a winner of the Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2023. He has been featured on BBC Radio 6 and BBC Radio 3’s The Verb, and has also performed in a variety of festivals including BBC’s Contains Strong Language, All Points East, Leeds Literature Fest, Manchester Pride, and Manchester Punk Festival. Currently, they are working as an English teacher and freelancing as a writer and facilitator. You can find out more about them on Instagram and Twitter @punkofcolour.

Also joining the panel is the multi-talented afshan d’souza-lodhi (she/they), born in Dubai and forged in Manchester. She is a writer of scripts and poetry and her work has been performed and translated into numerous languages across the world. afshan has been writer-in-residence for Sky Studios, New Writing North, Royal Exchange Theatre, Warner Bros Discovery and was writer-in-residence for Bluebird Pictures. she was also one of the first to receive The National Theatre’s Peter Shaffer award in 2022. Afshan has been a BAFTA BFI Flare mentee and has developed a TV series with Sky Studios. A TV pilot she wrote called Chop Chop, was selected for the second annual #MuslimList (The Black List). As well as her own writing, afshan is keen to develop other younger and emerging artists and sits on the boards of Manchester Literature Festival, Pie Radio and Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester. She is also the WGGB Regional chair of Manchester and Lancashire.

Last but by no means least, Melanie Neads (she/her) will be joining the panel. She is a poet, playwright and dramaturge from Salford whose new collection of univocalic poetry and plays, Euphoria, was published in September 2024 by Flapjack Press. Her poetry has won several competitions and her co-authored collection with Sarah Miller, Selkie Singing at the Passing Place, was Best Collaborative Work runner-up at the Saboteur Awards. Her plays have won the Forever Manchester Award, been shortlisted for the Shelagh Delaney Award, and performed on radio by victims of youth crime for Live from Worktown’s Standing Together community safety project. Melanie co-founded the Pavilion Theatre Company in Bolton, was Drama Co-ordinator for Salford Young People’s University, and is a tantric and somatic yoga teacher and award-winning English and Drama SEN teacher.

Stay tuned to find out who our special 2024 Slamovision representative will be!