Daniel Sluman: Writer-in-Residence | Arvon

Daniel Sluman

Interrogating the Muse

Daniel Sluman: Arvon Writer-in-Residence 2025

Daniel Sluman is a poet and disability rights activist. He co-edited the first major UK Disability poetry anthology Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back and he has appeared widely in U.K. poetry journals. He has three poetry collections published by Nine Arches Press and his most recent book, single window, was released in 2021 and was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. 

His experience of judging the Forward Prize this year has reinvigorated his lifelong passion for looking beneath the surface of poems to really interrogate what makes a poem, and what forges and then sustains a poetic career.   

 

Watch Daniel Sluman’s introduction to the 2025 Writer-in-Residence: 

‘I’m delighted to say that I am Arvon’s 2025 Writer-in-Residence. Following on from Inua Ellam’s wonderful residency in 2024, I will be making ‘Interrogating the Muse’ the theme for my year of programming. Ever since I took an MA class in creativity I have been excited and intrigued by the theories and ideas that underpin the creation of new work, and across my programme we are going to have interviews and readings with some of the most prolific and talented poets in the U.K. and U.S about their process. We are going to find out what has changed or stayed the same over decades of their writing, and how we can apply these lessons to our own work. We are going to start my 2025 virtual residency with a week of mini poetry challenges in January, which is free to join and I hope will be a great way to kick start your writing in 2025. Then throughout the year I will be programming ‘in-conversation’ events, masterclasses and our groundbreaking course on D/deaf and Disabled writing, this time headed up by Khairani Barokka and Dr Dorothy Lehane.  

I have been wrestling with my own process and fascinated with those of other writers, and in my residency I want to investigate and dig up the concepts and ideas that we base so much of our understanding of the craft of writing on. I believe the best way to do that is to speak to writers in depth about their processes and schema, the superstitions and guiding concepts that have helped move them through careers of prize-winning work.’ 

Eliza Squire-Bird, Co-Director of Arvon at Home, Arvon:  

‘So much about the process of writing can feel out of reach to many people; and there may be no culprit more to blame for this than the illusive figure of ‘the muse.’ Who is she? How can she be accessed? Is she available to everyone, or just to the few people with the right upbringing, the right education, and the right turret at the top of a tall tower with endless days to write and dream? Daniel is interested in interrogating this slippery figure, to really look under the bonnet of poems, to pull apart the techniques and the practices.  

He is starting the year with his five-day challenge, in which he is going to introduce various different approaches to drafting poems, designing to kick start your writing in 2025. 

Then, throughout the year, Daniel is going to be interviewing a number of poets at the top of their game about their process and their careers; he’ll be ‘in conversation’ with Pascale Petit, American writer Matthew Zapruder and the winner of the Forward Prize for Poetry 2024, Victoria Chang. 

As well as shorter events, Daniel has programmed Khairani Barokka and Dr Dorothy Lehane to lead a month-long course on writing through the bodymind. As Khairani and Dorothy explain: 

‘Disabled people are the world’s largest minority—we are a population of resistance, abundance and plural histories of creativity. In this course, we work from a perspective of disability justice, as coined by the group Sins Invalid, that recognises these resistances. We will learn how to communicate our experiences of bodyminds glorious in their divergences from the normative, joys and self-affirmation alongside pain, fatigue, isolation, or stigma, and then mould these moments into innovative new work.’ 

This is going to be a year of innovation, celebration and interrogation of everything that has previously been assumed about who gets to create poetry and how they do it.’  

 

5-Day Writing Challenge

Sign up below to join the free Arvon 5-day Poetry Writing Challenge with Daniel Sluman.

Each day, between Monday 13th January to Friday 17th January we will email you a writing prompt with supporting materials, guided by poet and disability rights activist Daniel Sluman. By the end of the week, you will have several new pieces of poetry or perhaps have embarked on a longer piece, all ready to be polished and prodded as you see fit.

Daniel’s 5-day Challenge will inspire you to find poetry in the world around you, empowering you to draw inspiration from the people and places in your life.