{"id":1941,"date":"2017-10-25T14:17:37","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T01:17:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/?p=1941"},"modified":"2019-07-12T12:07:49","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T00:07:49","slug":"climate-change-creative-writing-second-place-winner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/2017\/10\/25\/climate-change-creative-writing-second-place-winner\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Change Creative Writing – Second Place Winner"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Flood<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Janet Newman*<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the floodwaters rose up<\/p>\n

covering the plain with mirrors and veils<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

our backyards looked like other people\u2019s<\/p>\n

and the roads we drove failed under rivers<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

that seemed to have been there longer than we had.<\/p>\n

Belongings stacked on pool tables sagged.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sixteen sand bags might as well have been a cache of illegal toheroas<\/p>\n

for all the good they could muster<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

against the weight of water<\/p>\n

spilling over the stopbanks.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When the floodwaters rose up<\/p>\n

we sank down<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

into our steamed-up cars if we could find them,<\/p>\n

our fire-warmed lounges if we could reach them,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

watching the rain gauge, the tide times,<\/p>\n

the insurance claim, the surge line.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We wrote everything down in the record books<\/p>\n

but the numbers didn\u2019t look like much<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

because we\u2019d stopped feeling<\/p>\n

like we were the ones who counted.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When the floodwaters rose up<\/p>\n

we sank back down to the bush<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

with the weka\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

and the powelliphanta snails<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and the katipo<\/p>\n

clinging to waterlogged webs<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and peketua, paddling,<\/p>\n

holding up their heads.<\/p>\n

*Flood\u00a0was first\u00a0published in\u00a0Atlanta\u00a0Review <\/em>(New Zealand)\u00a0<\/em>Spring\/Summer 2017 and is republished here with kind permission of the editor.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flood By Janet Newman* When the floodwaters rose up covering the plain with mirrors and veils   our backyards looked like other people\u2019s and the roads we drove failed under rivers   that seemed to have been there longer than we had. Belongings stacked on pool tables sagged.   Sixteen sand bags might as well […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,101,1,13,66],"tags":[184],"class_list":["post-1941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative-writing","category-events","category-expressive-arts-subject","category-theatre","category-wellington-campus-campus","tag-climate-change-theatre-action"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1941"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1958,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941\/revisions\/1958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}