The Sudden Writing Prize 2023 Winner – Maz Howard
In 2023, Express Media worked with AAWP in judging the Sudden Writing Prize. Below is the winning piece, ‘this is the earth’s Alarm system going off’ by Maz Howard. You can read the judges’ report and runner-ups here.
this is the earth’s Alarm system going off
Maz Howard
After Chris Jordan’s Midway this is the Reckoning. me little red in the big grey hands; i was born into the era of destruction, of revolution between ash-blackened lips, the earth unmaking: one cracked ribcage and a disconnected heart. i was born into a litter of one billion, handheld from the moment i entered the world born hollow and full all at once so i would always know i was capable of both. i was born contradictory: plastic and metal flimsy and dangerousalways the spark and never the flame into a world disconnected and inhospitable to difference, so i was born Shatterproof.this is the Loneliness. me little harbinger changing hands like legal tender, kissing heads unfamiliar, popping cherries like i want fullness but every time i am a little emptier. little me factory-made and sailed two oceans by the time i was three (hours); me withnine hundred ninety-nine million nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine siblings growing lonely like a Tumour, like something displaced, built heftier than the destruction that birthed me. second skin i am pre-packaged pretty on the shelf and one warm mouth bringing the end days, slow indifferent. it is what i was born to do.this is the Othering. me little death in a lover’s hand, always destined to burn out doing what i loved most, always a flint strike from apocalyptic. this is not the end not yet; this is emptiness; this is spitting Butane at the hand that feeds. i am corpse-like, half-drowned and how easily forgotten: this me, this little red heart, this manmade world born to spark up and how succinct to have it end underwater washed upcough heavy in my plastic skin. i am disposable and everlasting at the same time; i am thrown away by the hand that made me, no flicker left in my lonely throat; i am never more foreign than here now: human hand raised to be Suffering, unbreakable in avian gizzard.this is the Alarm. this is end days. this is the job as i was born to do it. this is the world as grey hands have made it. and this is me little dinner coughed up in lonely mouths. this is the message:“if you see me weep.”
Author Bio:Maz Howard is an emerging prose and poetry writer on Kaurna land. Their work has previously been published in Slinkies 2022 and Making Tracks zine. Recently graduated from university, they now spend most of their time putting the kettle on to boil.
The Sudden Writing Prize was co-judged by AAWP and Voiceworks.