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.

A Dublin-based poet, Leon’s work focuses primarily on giving a voice to topics outside the mainstream conversation. Coming from a working-class background, and after studying English and Film at UCD, he engages in language and rhythm with high energy to draw the listeners in. As Leon puts it, “I write poems and stories for people that may feel left behind by the mainstream culture”. In November 2022 the artist won The All-Ireland Poetry Slam Championship held in Cork and in March 2023 he performed at Trafalgar Square, in front of 15,000 people, as part of London’s St. Patrick’s Day Festival.

Hailing from West Dorset, Jonah Corren is a songwriter-poet. His poems have been published most recently by Violet Indigo Blue, etc, and in the After Sylvia anthology from Nine Arches Press. He is also a UniSlam champion (2019), Exeter City Slam Champion (2023) and an alumnus of BBC New Creatives (2019/20), Beatfreeks Artivists in Training (2020) and The Apples & Snakes Writing Room (2021). Jonah’s debut folk-rock EP, Dreaming and Petty Crime, was released in December 2020, and his spoken word and music single Borderlines, a collaboration with rapper and multi-instrumentalist Rowan Sawday (better known by his stage persona Dizraeli), was released in December 2021. He is now living in Plymouth, and is the organiser of local monthly poetry evening ‘POETRY@thePPL’.

Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey is an author, performer, and producer. His debut book, Look, Black Boy, was awarded first prize in the North Street Book Prize, and his second book, Heart Notes was published in 2019. He released two spoken word albums, a studio version of Look, Black Boy, and a performance album titled, Heart Notes Live! For three years in a row he was named Best Poet/Spoken Word Performer in Cedar Rapids & Iowa City. He is the winner of several slams across the United States, has shared the stage with spoken word titans such as Siaara Freeman, Javon Johnson, Ebony Stewart, Anthony McPherson, and Patricia Smith, and videos of his performances can be found on his YouTube channel, Write About Now, and Button Poetry.

Pietari Willey is a musician and cello teacher living in Kuhmo. During his studies Pietari also studied composing in Helsinki and London, which included familiarizing with the connection between written word, music, and rhythmic structures. Some of Pietari’s favourite poets include Eino Leino, Uuno Kailas, and Robert Frost. For this entry, Pietari wanted to explore possibilities of using artificial intelligence in formulating a poem, exploring how ChatGPT handles various prompts and metres. ChatGPT was used to create a starting point, which was heavily edited into the final competition entry. Kalevala re-imagined presents a story from the Finnish national epic with a modern twist. Two characters face off in a rap / slam poetry battle. The original epic did have a shamanistic battle with spells, but perhaps as a commentary about the limitations and reliability of modern technology, the characters facing off are somewhat different than in the original epic.

Nika Gradišek (2001) is a student of sociology and English at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana, a poet, journalist, tourist guide, amateur debater, musician and actress. Her poetry has been published in Primus, Poetikon, Mentor, Novi Zvon, LUD Literatura and elsewhere, and translated and published in English, Italian, Serbian, and Portuguese. Two of her essays have been published in Anthropos and Sodobnost. Nika is the editor-in-chief of the literary newsletter ENgLIST at the Department of English and American Studies at the Faculty of Arts, part of the artistic and organizational team of Young Rhymes in Ljubljana and a member of Slam Beasts in Maribor. She is also a winner of the Župančič Frulica, a finalist of the Little Veronica and the Poetry Olympics, a two-time winner of the emojie poetry competition, a winner of the competition for the worst poetry and the current slam poetry champion, who will represent Slovenia at the World Slam Poetry Championships in Brazil this October. She is particularly pleased to be able to wear the last two titles (Worst Poetry and Best Slam Poetry) at the same time this year.

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.

Créateur tant multidisciplinaire qu’indiscipliné, Thomas Langlois pratique la poésie orale (slam), le théâtre corporel et grotesque, la performance et l’art multi, à travers des créations souvent hybrides. Slameur grinçant grande gueule à temps plein – pour le meilleur et pour le pire ! – Thomas se dédie aux textes qui jappent, mordent, frappent et percent l’oreille. Ses distinctions : Champion Slam de la Capitale (2011, 2015, 2017), Champion Slam du Québec (2017 et 2018), Vice-champion du monde à la Coupe mondiale de slam de Paris (2018) et co-gagnant du concours international Slam-O-Vision de Melbourne (2020). Il est cofondateur et cocréateur actif des collectifs Dans Ta Tête et P’lis d’langue. Il est également titulaire d’un baccalauréat en théâtre, puis d’une maîtrise à l’Université Laval, où il a développé la théâtralisation du slam de poésie par l’intégration de la biomécanique de Meyerhold (jusqu’à créer le slam-théâtre). Il y poursuit actuellement des études doctorales.

Multidisciplinary and undisciplined creator, Thomas Langlois practices spoken (slam) poetry, corporeal and grotesque theatre, performance and multimedia art through often hybrid creations. A full-time outspoken slam artist – for better or for worse! – Thomas is dedicated to texts that bark, bite, strike, and pierce the ear. His distinctions include: Capital Slam Champion (2011, 2015, 2017), Quebec Slam Champion (2017 and 2018), Vice World Champion at the World Slam Cup in Paris (2018), and co-winner of the international Slam-O-Vision competition in Melbourne (2020). He is the co-founder and active creator of the collectives Dans Ta Tête and P’lis d’langue. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in theatre, and a master’s degree from Laval University, where he developed the theatralisation of slam poetry through the integration of Meyerhold’s biomechanics (to create slam-theatre). He is currently pursuing doctoral studies there.

Sunna was born and raised in a bilingual household in Reykjavík, a self-described archetypical west-city kid. Sunna’s mother is a great language enthusiast and her father a native French speaker, and both ignited and fostered Sunna’s passion for languages. She loves singing and sings in a choir, which she particularly enjoys. She also enjoys creative writing and music, and really loves when the two art forms meet. In her view, poetry slam is therefore the perfect form of artistic expression, and one which influences both her music and writing. She has now written a poem about circulation called “A Breather”.

Poet, blogger and photographer from South Estonia, Murca has been writing since the day she could and performing for over 10 years. Murca writes about various things: queer feminist meanness/cattiness and simple everyday joys, and is always getting inspired by words that, for some reason, seem to want to rhyme and not be translated. Murca is the winner of the Tartu poetry slam 2023 and a finalist of the Estonian national poetry slam in 2022 and 2023. In this poem, she plays with elements of Estonian folk poetry tradition.

Ernestas Noreika was born in 1989 in Kaunas. He studied Lithuanian philology at the Lithuanian Educology University. His first poetry book Lake of Peacocks (2012) won the Zigmas Gėlė-Gaidamavičius prize for best poetry debut. His second poetry book Andalusian Dog was published in 2016. His third poetry book Apollo (2019) won a prestigious Young Yotvingian award and in 2022 his fourth collection of poems Aquanauts was published. Ernestas Noreika is also a well-known rap and hip-hop singer (his stage name is Beeta). He is the author of three albums – Twin Peaks (2014), Kūlgrinda (2017) and Sekretai (2022).