Friday, July 07, 2023

Poetry Walks

Walk along Church Street as if you were a silent observer watching the world go by.
Turn right onto Brick Land like a mermaid swimming in the depths of the sea.
Let your worries fade away and turn left onto the High Street.

This is a short extract from a poem which was generated for me by the wonderful A Walking Poem. A Walking Poem generates short poems based on your current location. Share your location with A Walking Poem and it will provide you with a walking poem, in the form of poetic walking directions (to a random nearby location).

When you share your location with A Walking Poem it looks at the Google Maps directions from your current location to another nearby random location. It then turns those walking directions into a psychogeographical poem using (I guess) a long list of similes and descriptive phrases.

If you like A Walking Poem then you will probably also like OpenStreetMap Haiku. OpenStreetMap Haiku is a clever map that can write a short poem about any location in the world based on the OpenStreetMap data for that location. 

Share your location with OpenStreetMap Haiku and it will generate a unique haiku using data gleaned from OpenStreetMap using Overpass Turbo. To do this OpenStreetMap Haiku matches random verses with OpenStreetMap tags. For example if a supermarket is near your location OpenStreetMap Haiku will randomly select a related line, such as "Salad cabbage and carrots", "The cashier’s bored" or "A lonely aisle".

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