Objective: Students will read Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s poem “How to Steal a Canoe” and then write an object autobiography of the object they chose in the previous lesson. The object autobiography can be prose or poetry, and may come from an emotional space and/or research of the material origins.
The teacher distributes “How to Steal a Canoe” and/or plays the animation performance video. Students answer worksheet questions regarding how the poet chooses to write the biography of the canoe. (Link to written poem: https://arcpoetry.ca/editorials/how-to-steal-a-canoe/; link to animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp5oGZ1r60g.)
Worksheet questions include:
- What happens in the poem?
- What emotions are brought up in the poem? What lines make you say that?
- How does the poet animate the inanimate? How does the poet make the canoe seem like an alive being?
- What tree has white skin? (Birches, traditionally used in creating waterproof vessels.) What might be another reason the poet chose to refer to white skin? How do the different reasons compare?
- Why did the poet write this poem?
Students are then instructed to write or speak a page-long biography or autobiography of their object. Students must consider the historical contexts of their objects. Students must use I statements in the voice of the object if doing an autobiography, or direct their biography as addressing the object using the pronoun “you.” Suggestion: provide samples from Evocative Objects: Things We Think With (Turkle, et. al) to help students. https://books.google.com/books/about/Evocative_Objects.html?id=u82t0sCZDpwC. Extension activity is to analyze some of the essays for purpose and methods of conveying messages.
The remainder of the class consists of students sharing their object autobiographies.
Exit ticket: How does hearing an object’s voice change how you interact with the object?
