I'm reading a book at the moment by Charlie Connelly called, "Attention All Shipping". It's a journey round the BBC Shipping forecast on Radio 4. The nightly shipping forcast is one of the iconic broadcasts by the BBC. I have listend to it late at night driving home with the rain beating off the car windows or tucked up in bed with the duvet round me thinking of fishing boats battling though a force 8 or 9 in the Irish Sea.
In the book a mention is made of that fine poem by Sean Street and I thought I would share it with you.

Shipping Forecast
The Fisherman and His Wife in Donegal

They have shared still late October,
but salt stones and a broken tree,
the peeled paint on the lifeboat house
chime with places where the glass falls,
prime sources encountering night’s bald predictions.

Everywhere winter edges in,
and now the time is ten to six...
Lightness and weight, air’s potentials
pressed into words, implication;
here – on all coasts – listening grows passionately tense.

Fair Isle, Faeroes, South East Iceland,
North Utsire, South Utsire,
Fisher, German Bight, Tyne, Dogger...
This pattern of names on the sea –
Weather’s unlistening geography – paves water.
Beyond the music, the singing
of sounds – this minimal chanting,
this ritual pared to the bone
becomes the cold poetry of information.

The litany edges closer –Lundy, Fastnet and Irish Sea...
Routine enough, all just routine,
Always his eyes guessing beyond
the headland, she perhaps sleeping, no words spoken.

He stretches forward to grasp it,
claims his radio place – and now
the weather reports from coastal stations and then:
Malin Head – such routine
that she barely glances up, but hears now falling.