Manchester are the current champions of the global poetry slam competition between UNESCO Cities of Literature so Griot Gabriel will give a hometown performance of his poem ‘Where I’m From’ this December.

Griot Gabriel is a hip-hop influenced poet, and youth worker in Manchester. He describes himself as ‘Underdog, Under armour, Under God’. His poetry explores race, resistance, personal identity and relevant social issues. In a very short space of time as a creative, Griot Gabriel has been commissioned to write and perform with Chanel, Warner Bros, Manchester United, Manchester International Festival, performed at Glastonbury 23, and performed at the opening book launch of Jason Reynolds (the creator of Miles Morales, Spiderman).

A huge thanks to our expert judging panel and everyone who entered the local heats of our Slamovision callout, the standard was high and it’s brilliant to see so many poets keen to represent our city. The Slamovision 2024 Grand Finale will be held at Manchester Poetry Library on Thursday 12th December. If you’d like to attend to support Gabriel, you can get tickets on our website soon.

The ‘Eurovision for the Spoken Word’ has been contested since 2019 and is aimed at increasing cultural participation within individual cities as well as showcasing local talent on an international stage. The next round of voting will be closed judging within each city (although no city can vote for itself) as well as a parallel public vote. The details of the public vote will be added to our website as soon as it launches, make sure you subscribe to our newsletter to keep up to date.

Sixteen UNESCO Cities of Literature, including Manchester, are participating in Slamovision 2024 – the largest number of cities since the competition began: Bremen (Germany), Dublin (Ireland), Exeter (UK), Gothenburg (Sweden), Granada (Spain), Iowa City (US), Kuhmo (Finland), Kutaisi (Georgia), Ljubljana (Slovenia), Manchester (UK), Melbourne (Australia), Québec City (Canada), Reykjavik (Iceland), Tartu (Estonia), Vilnius (Lithuania) and Wrocław (Poland).