I’ve always been fascinated by what3words, an app that has assigned every three metre square in the world a unique three word address that will never change. That means I can name the exact three word addresses that coincide with my childhood bedroom, my favourite swimming hole, and the kitchen table where I’m writing at this very moment (easily.ambushed.glow).
It’s a useful resource, and I’ve employed it a lot, even given the occasional social risk; one of my friends was meeting up with me for a drink but didn’t know how to find the pub, and was rather offended to be called a melon.brains.fool.
I’ve been thinking for a while about how to use it for a poetry prompt, and it suddenly came to me this morning. Why not write an entire poem in three word addresses?
The locations below correspond to a small village in Turkey, the wilds of Canada’s northwest frontier, an industrial town on the border between Kazakhstan and Russia and the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. You can click on every line to discover the unique location it corresponds to. Go explore!
What Three Words?
post.codes.often
awry.tedious.latitudes
forgettable.longitudes.worse
grid.references.require
proper.kind.maps
lost.perplexed.bewildered
cold.alone.desperate
existential.crisis.threaten
away.with.fear
infinite.monkey.typewriter
will.locate.everyone
giving.dairy.nothing
local.habitation.plus
name.such.tricks
hath.strong.computers
A Fool Grows Wise 