With whale tooth and dry leaf: Object-led writing and teaching

This article examines how concepts of relationality and nonhuman agency can inform processes of writing with material objects, and the teaching of this through object-based learning. Bringing together self-reflexive and emotionally attuned approaches from life writing, the tactile and sensory focus of object-based learning, and notions of material vitality, object-led writing is a practice guided by the more-than-human. The structure for this practice is based on a class teaching creative writing with objects in a university museum, using objects from the collection. It establishes a framework for object-led writing through a set of cumulative strategies: description, feeling, knowing, time and chance. These strategies attune writers to the lively potential of objects beyond their associations with humans. They form a guide for teaching creative writing with objects as well as for experimenting with object-led writing and for understanding the potential for nonhuman life to shape and direct literary work.