Fascination with the weather and love of the sea combine in the Shipping Forecast. As Rob Stepney explains, it is also a honey pot for poets who have both parodied and eulogised it .

It is 100 years since BBC national radio first broadcast a weather forecast specifically designed for sailors in our coastal waters. Those whose safety depends directly on this service are relatively few. But there is a legion of landlubbers who cherish the Forecast for its hypnotic rhythm and inexplicably evocative sea areas.

For Carol Ann Duffy, the Forecast is “the radio’s prayer – Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre”. For WJ Webster, the sea areas are the “ring of odd and yet familiar names/ recited in its stately settled round”. Michael Howe feels that they chart “the seas/ between what we hear and/ w

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