Christopher Britton from the Quad Cities will be Iowa City’s representative in the 2026 Slamovision competition. This international slam poetry event will feature poets from 24 participating UNESCO Cities of Literature competing to be named the Slamovision champion.
Britton is an educator, poet, and emcee from Rock Island where he has spent two decades putting pens in the hands of young people who swore they would never be writers. He founded M.A.D. Skills, a youth creative expression program recognized by the NAACP, and now develops curriculum in personal narrative, transformational writing, and performance poetry under the name Cre8.it! He teaches digital media at Thurgood Marshall Learning Center, an alternative high school. He hosts open mics, leads writing workshops, and is at work on his first novel in verse. He lives there with his wife Trisha and their three daughters.
The qualifying slam was held Sept. 3 at Public Space One’s Close House space in Iowa City. Britton was one of 13 poets who competed in the three-round event.
Videos of the winning poets from the participating Cities of Literature will be judged at an event held during the Iowa City Book Festival. Iowa City poets and poetry lovers will convene to watch and rank the performances. This same process will happen in the other Cities of Literature. That judging event will be held at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 21, in Meeting Room A of the Iowa City Public Library. Free pizza will be provided.
The scores from all of the cities will be tabulated and the results will be shared during the Slamovision finale, which will be held live at 2 p.m. at the James Theater in Iowa City and streamed live around the world. The top-scoring poet will be crowned the 2026 Slamovision champion.
Participating Cities of Literature are Angoulême, France; Bremen, Germany; Dublin, Ireland; Edinburgh, Scotland; Exeter, UK; Gdansk, Poland; Gothenburg, Sweden; Heidelberg, Germany; Hobart, Australia; Iowa City; Kozhikode, India; Krakow, Poland; Kutaisi, Georgia; Lyon, France; Manchester, UK; Nottingham, UK; Odesa, Ukraine; Quebec City, Canada; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Taif, Saudi Arabia; Tartu, Estonia; Vilnius, Lithuania; and Wroclaw, Poland.
Henry Morray, another Quad Cities-based poet, represented Iowa City in the 2025 competition and was named the international Slamovision champion.
