Competition Ranking: Winner

Esther Koch is a 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. With her words, she closed the the Team GB homecoming ceremony at Wembley Stadium in 2021. More recently Esther performed her commissioned poem “Manchester is alive, I can assure you” at the One Young World 2022 summit. Esther 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 for Stand Up To Racism. Esther has also produced educational content for BBC Bitesize. She recently produced a collection entitled “Hoarfrost On Our Lips” which was exhibited alongside artwork at Manchester gallery, Paradise Works. Currently, she’s working with charity 42nd Street on a reflective piece of poetry about the effects of lockdown on young people.

Abíọ́dún ‘Abbey’ Abdul is a Yorùbá-Nigerian English Language Lecturer and writer of poems, essays and memoir-polemics reflecting on social issues encompassing her schooling across three continents. She won various poetry awards throughout childhood and her work focusing on social justice and celebrating our common humanity has been published in anthologies.

Cara Thompson (or ‘CreativelyCandid’) is a writer, poet, and self-described “Black Wellness Warrior” from Nottingham, England. Born into a lively Jamaican-British family, Cara started writing at the age of 14 in the form of silly short stories and secret songwriting sessions with mates. Since then, Cara has used poetry to explore her identity, celebrate her Caribbean heritage, and address the often-unspoken impacts of racism on Black British community members. Cara has collaborated with the NHS, Oxfam, Simon and Schuster and more, and she is currently a proud member of the Nottingham based poetry collective ‘GOBS’. She also loves cheese.

Both multidisciplinary and undisciplined, Thomas Langlois performs in hybrid shows blending oral poetry and theatrical experimentation. He has won several distinctions: Slam Champion of Quebec City (2011, 2015, 2017), Provincial Slam Champion (2017 and 2018) and Vice-World Champion at the Grand Poetry Slam World Cup of Paris (2018). Co-founder and active creator with Dans Ta Tête (DTT) and P’lis d´langue collectives, he is also the co-founder and general and artistic co-director of JokerJoker, which promotes a series of nomadic  multidisciplinary shows.

Babs Gons is a writer, performer and theatre producer. She set up the Poetry Circle Nowhere platform to bring together Dutch writing performers and performing writers. Gons can also be considered a spoken word pioneer and she regularly treads the boards herself with her own poems.