Daniel Sluman’s 5-Day Writing Challenge – Day 1

Welcome to the Arvon 5-Day Poetry Writing Challenge with Daniel Sluman. We’re thrilled to have you join us for an inspiring week of creative exploration.

Starting today, we’ll send you a new writing prompt each day to spark your creativity. Guided by poet and disability rights activist Daniel Sluman, this challenge will encourage you to find poetry in the world around you—from the people you know to the places you encounter. By Friday, you’ll have several new pieces of poetry to refine, or perhaps you’ll have started a longer work to shape over time.

To explore your writing further, check out Arvon’s upcoming Masterclasses and Online Writing Weeks on our website. These in-depth courses, taught by leading tutors, provide the perfect space to develop your writing. Explore the full schedule here.

We hope you enjoy the journey and look forward to hearing what you create!

Best regards,

The Arvon Team

Defamiliarization

Defamiliarization is one of the most prevalent techniques in contemporary poetry. It is the concept of looking closely at something we know well, and investigating it, using all the senses and language available to us. In this exercise my challenge to you is to find an object in your living space and write about it as if you have just experienced it for the first time, describing it using the senses, asking it questions, making it wholly new for the reader. I’ve included a link to the essay Art as Technique by Viktor Shklovsky, which explains defamiliarization brilliantly, including excerpts of a Tolstoy story written from the perspective of a horse.

To read Art as Technique by Viktor Shklovsky, click here.