The spoken word version of Eurovision, hosted by the UNESCO Cities of Literature — where each City slams their way to the grand title of Slamovision Champion every year! The UNESCO Creative Cities of Literature hold this esteemed international poetry competition to explore different approaches to poetry performance, which Manchester holds highly in its regard as a city with poetry truly at its heart.

2020

Manchester has been taking part in Slamovision since 2020, when it was expertly hosted online by Tartu City of Literature in Estonia. We were thrilled that Manchester was voted by fellow Cities of Literature as the joint winner of the competition with an entry called ‘Barbirolli Square’ by Jardel Rodrigues (which you can view below). Quebec City were our fellow reining champs.

2021

In 2021, as the previous winners, Manchester and Quebec City in Canada jointly hosted the global event, taking place at Manchester Poetry Library. On November 30th our event was live streamed around the world as well as having a small in person audience. Manchester was proudly represented by PA Bitez in 2021 and you can view her entry ‘Mother Messiah’ below, after fierce competition where many notorious Manchester slam poets competed at a Slamovision Special of One Mic Stand hosted in partnership with Young Identity in September. Nottingham City of Literature took the crown with a winning poem called ‘Where Are You From?’ by Cara Thompson.

2022

In 2022 Carson Wolfe was selected to represent Manchester at Slamovision, you can see Carson’s entry below. Nottingham City of Literature were once again voted as winners with a poem by Abíọ́dún ‘Abbey’ Abdul, who represented Nottingham with her poem ‘Strong Tea’.

2023

in 2023, after an open callout for entries, Manchester was thrilled to be represented by award-winning performance poet Esther Koch. An exciting night of slam poetry took place at Metronome Nottingham on Tuesday 5th December where twelve UNESCO Cities of Literature competed both in person and online to a live audience featuring performances from local Nottingham poets. Esther Koch performed her poem ‘Taurean at the Nightclub’ live and after a tense round of voting by fellow Cities of Literature, Manchester was announced as winners of Slamovision 2023! Huge congratulations to Esther.

2024

In 2024 Manchester hosted Slamovision for the second time. After competitive local heats, Manchester was proudly represented by Griot Gabriel with his poem ‘Where I’m From’ which you can watch below.

The 2024 champion, Cormac Mac Gearailt brought the Slamovision crown to Dublin for 2025 with his poem ‘Lament of the Trees’, winning the competition for Ireland for the first time. Cormac is a bilingual spoken word artist and poet from Dublin, who explores profound themes such as the passage of time, urban isolation, addiction, ecological collapse, the loss of native language, along with love, family, and the beauty of nature. In September, he was the winner of the Leinster Slam Championship.

This was the largest Slamovision to date, and arguably the most competitive yet. Each finalist had already got through at least one local heat and delivered their best performance to compete for the coveted title of champion. A close second place went to Manchester’s own Griot Gabriel, closely followed by Thomas Valcourt from Québec City in third.