Submit your work and win

What have you been working on? Submit your work to the world’s largest archive of walking pieces. If your work is recent, it is automatically eligible for the Sound Walk September or Marŝarto Awards, meaning you stand to win cold, hard, cash in the process.

Support walk · listen · create

walk · listen · create is a member-supported organisation. If you like what we do, and want to see more of it, please become a supporting member.

You will be facilitating a more sustainable organisation and you will contribute to larger prizes for both the SWS and Marŝarto Awards. And, as a supporting member, you get free access to our online cafés.

Support us from 5 euros per month. It’s even a bit cheaper if you commit for a whole year. Check out the details.

Writing and walking

We are celebrating Writing About Walking. For the last 5 years we have run annual poetry and flash fiction writing competitions on different themes. During 2026 we will be spotlighting shortlisted works from each of these by including one in each of our weekly newsletters.

This week we have chosen The Knife Sharpener of Alzira by Eleanor Holmes that was shortlisted in the 2025 competition on the theme of Walking In The Dark.

Crepuscular by nature, the knife sharpener stalks the streets and touts for trade with his shrill whistle: small row of metallic pipes, blown with a flourish. Swifts race along the narrow streets and his voice, that familiar cry, carries on their wings across terracotta rooftops: ‘Afilador, Afilador.’

Methodically he maps the city, route always the same: restaurant owners, fishmongers, the butcher, leaving the housewives to last. They greet him as he pushes the old Vespa onto its stand, to run a whetstone from the high-whine motor. Blade on stone sparks blunted memory; a trickle of sweat runs down his face. Hands betray a fine tremor; nerve endings shot to pieces. Her silk scarf tied to his right wrist; he wipes his brow. The children hold their breath; watch from a distance.

There was a time when he could have done this blindfolded, like he used to blindfold her. Spinning the painted board, before he let the knives fly. How the air vibrated as he tuned in to her breathing, her scent, the slow pulse in her veins. Now his workshop feels more like a shrine: tools of his trade lined up, in size order; a pair of her sequin tights. Peg board with tape outlines, one tool missing; white chalk drawn on the ground.

The city’s children follow him home, peer in the window. He sits with his back to them. Feels the weight of their curiosity, cut him, like a knife.

Want to read other long and short listed pieces under this theme? Go here.