Poetry Slam Best of 26

Poetry slam — that is poetry as an exchange of blows, pop music made of words, language as dance. Fireworks of text that burn up in five minutes.

The audience decides — this time among the best of the year: authors with a full load of stage literature who impressed on their reading stages or at poetry slams in 2026. Haunting and wild, sometimes loud and funny.

Wolf Hogekamp guides you through this iconic word show.

With:

Bas Böttcher — with his poetry performances, he has been causing a stir since the 1990s. In his readings, prose, poetry and rap merge into a dynamic flow of words.

Aron Boks — this year's poetry slam championship finalist. He received the Klopstock Prize for New Literature and, as a member of PEN Berlin, was on a nationwide tour on the theme of home.

Noah Klaus — Berlin-Brandenburg Poetry Slam Champion 2014. He appears as a stage poet nationwide and is a member of the reading stage “Prunk und Prose”.

Jacinta Nandi — founding member of the interdisciplinary artist collective Parallelgesellschaft. She writes about motherhood, poverty and everyday life, and her debut novel Single Mom Supper Club was published in 2025.

Ken Yamamoto — intermedial artist at the interface of poetry, sound and performance. Since 2004, he has been reading and performing in bars, clubs, theaters, museums and at literary festivals and is also a member of the artist collective Parallel Society.

Zarah Weiss — undoubtedly one of the best up-and-coming authors from Berlin. Her lyrics regularly inspire visitors to the U20 poetry slam.

Wolf Hogekamp — presenter of the evening and pioneer of the German poetry slam. His texts playfully move between Dadaistic-snippet abstraction and crystalline observational acuity