Ever want to write a poem about Union Station but just can’t find the words? There’s now a new tool that can create poetry on demand — based solely on your or any location.

Satellite Studio, a team of designers and builders, recently created a project entitled “OpenStreetMap Haiku.” It uses a database of information set within a map that produces a new poem based on that knowledge.

Depending on the location, the end product could be uplifting or not, might not follow a haiku’s five-seven-five syllable format, and may possibly make no sense at all.

“Here’s what’s happening: we automated making haikus about places,” they wrote in a Dec. 10 blog post. “Looking at every aspect of the surroundings of a point, we can generate a poem about any place in the world.”

Satellite Studio explained that, for example, if a supermarket were nearby, a line similar to “Salad cabbage and carrots” would pop up; if it were a swimming pool, it would be “Smells of chlorine” and so on.

“The result is sometimes fun, often weird, most of the time pretty terrible.”

Here are a few slightly confusing, maybe unorthodox examples in Toronto:

Union Station

“From a passing train

Good afternoon

Branches of the tree”

Toronto City Hall

“Fills up with noise

Quite chilly

A hero remembered”

University of Toronto

“So many books

That’s how it is in Ontario

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There’s no crossing that fence”

High Park

“Crossing the fence

Flies and maggots

High up in the trees”

Port Lands

“The day going by

On the rail track

Wind in the clover”

According to Satellite Studio, the original inspiration for the map is a project called “every thing every time” by German Japanese artist Naho Matsuda. She aims to create “impractical poetry” from urban data, such as air quality or traffic, and then display it in real time in the city streets.

“We thought that creating a global version of the same idea would be interesting, not the least because it would allow us to get our hands dirty with OpenStreetMap data,” Satellite Studio wrote.

“We think we have created a little window into, maybe not the world, but into the world of OpenStreetMap. OpenStreetMap is a revolutionary project, it’s the most complete map of the world ever made.”

Ilya Bañares is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Star’s radio room in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @ilyaoverseas

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