Writing from objects

I took a bunch of objects along to The Bowery for tonight's Creative Writing Workshop - a plastic pirate, tiny football boots, fossils, shells, a feather boa and a bowler hat. It's always liberating to hold an object in your hand, to be able to twist and turn it, to sniff it, rest your cheek against it and then write about it.
I used Pablo Neruda's 'Ode to my Socks' http://knittingrat.blogspot.com/2005/12/ode-to-my-socks-by-pablo-neruda.html
There were some amazing responses when we 'became' an object and imbued it with life and a voice - there was a leather jacket, upstairs in a loft, walking round like a suit of armour, smoking joints and talking gibberish into the loft insulation material, and a rather disgruntled toilet....