2022 Post #3 -- Enough Ballrooms In You

 by Elizabeth Oosterheert

Culturally, we seem to find shipwrecks fascinating, whether the wreckage is actual or figurative.
Laura Lamb Brown Lavoie’s haunting poem “Titanic,” beautifully read by Sarah Kay, invites us to consider both–and not only to contemplate wreckage, but resilience.

There are myriad ways to invite students into this work and use it as a mentor for writing our own memorable poetry. Following are a few ways to dive into the waves with students and “swim” in a shimmering sea of words:

• Share this brief video about the decay of Titanic’s wreckage. This gives students a good frame of reference for the descriptions in Lavoie’s poem of elements like Titanic’s stalactite beard, and it also illustrates the loneliness that lingers around the ship’s remains more than a century after her demise.
• Provide students with a hard copy of the poem, and invite them to listen to this beautiful narration of “Titanic” by Sarah Kay, found on poetryfoundation.org and Ours Poetica.
• Discuss craft moves such as the use of sound devices, lists, and the development of dialogue between the narrator and Titanic, and what students notice about this unusual conversation. I created this hyperdoc for my students to enrich our discussion.
• This poem could serve as a bridge to other poems featuring conversations involving inanimate objects, such as Sarah Kay’s “Poem from a Toothbrush to a Bicycle Tire,” and a next step could be inviting students to try writing their own conversation poems. Encourage them to use some of the same powerful craft moves that they noticed in Lavoie’s poem. Interestingly, conversation poems also appear in Kwame Alexander’s beloved Newbery novel in verse, The Crossover.

Perhaps the most powerful aspect of “Titanic” is Lavoie’s reminder and charge to all of us to take the risk of being gouged open by love in a world that often feels sinister and isolating. In emptying ourselves sacrificially for the good of someone else, we become stronger.


Further Reading:



Elizabeth Oosterheert is a middle school language and theatre arts teacher in Central Iowa. Like the Titanic, she believes that sometimes, we have to sail into icebergs with courage and grace. You can find her on Twitter @oosterheerte, or on stage with her 8th Grade Theatre Troupe.