Henry Morray, a student at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, has been named Iowa City’s SlamoVision champion for 2022. A video of his winning slam poetry performance will be submitted to the international SlamoVision competition in November.
The Iowa City SlamoVision event was held at Public Space One’s Close House on Saturday, Oct. 15. About 60 people attended the event, and 16 poets participated. It was co-presented by the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature and Iowa City Poetry.
SlamoVision is a project of the international UNESCO Cities of Literature. Slam poets in 10 of the 42 Cities of Literature around the world compete in their home cities. One poet from each participating city move on to an international competition to be judged fans from the other cities. At the end of the process, one pet will be named the SlamoVision champion for 2022.
After three rounds, Morray was the winning poet. A video of his performance will be forwarded to Nottingham, England, which hosts this year’s event. A compilation of all of the winning poets will be created and shared with participating cities. Each city will judge participants from the other cities and the scores will be forwarded. Nottingham will host a live virtual event in December where the overall SlamoVision champion will be named.
The Iowa City judging event will be held at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 12, at MERGE in downtown Iowa City as part of the Mic Check Poetry Festival. The event is free and open to the public.
Poets from Bucheon, South Korea; Edinburgh, Scotland; Iowa City; Heidelberg, Germany; Melbourne, Australia; Nottingham, England; Quebec City, Canada; Reykjavik, Iceland; Seattle, Tartu, Estonia; and Utrecht, the Netherlands are taking part in SlamoVision.
Watch the SlamoVision event here.