Moderate Visibility
Posted: 08 June 2003
Word Count: 160
Summary: Names of places always fascinate me, and listening to the shipping forecast and all the shipping areas around the coast of the UK inspired me to try and write a poem about some of the areas, this is the result.
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Moderate Visibility
When I was a child long ago,
listening to the radio
with my grandma, sipping tea,
tuning in to the BBC
for the shipping forecast every day,
taking in each word they'd say.
Dogger, Fisher, German Bight;
precipitation within sight
away from land and out to sea
with moderate visibility.
Force four South, veering South West later,
warm winds coming from the Equator.
Bailey, Malin, Hebrides;
fog clearing in the gentle breeze.
Winds freshen in Finisterre
blowing rain clouds here and there.
Dover, Wight and Portland Bill,
gale force winds are raging still.
Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea
have moderate visibility.
Heavy rain in Tyne and Forth
and a good force nine is moving North
to Cromarty, where waves are high,
almost reaching for the sky.
While down in Plymouth the seas are calm
the forecast says it's turning warm,
over a thousand millibars
In clearing skies you'll see the stars.
Grandma, peering over her tea
says "moderate visibility".
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Comments by other Members
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 bluesky3d at 18:05 on 08 June 2003
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yes i agree.. i often listen to the shipping forecast last thing at night and think just the names of the sea areas on their own are sheer poetry
i enjoyed the poem .. but do not know whether anyone else would agree? if the poem started at the line
'Dogger, Fisher, German Bight;'
and the if the last line were...
'In clearing skies you'll see the stars.'
and miss out the story about your granny .. i somehow feel it would have greater universality .. at the moment i was left the connection with the image of the failing eyesight of your granny and the words 'moderate visibilty' almost got in the way of the poem, which as you say should be about the poetic names of the shipping areas.. perhaps your granny deserves her own poem? ;o)
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olebut at 18:23 on 08 June 2003
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well lady you watching over my shoulder or what because I have similar words scratched out in front of me as teh shipping forcast with all those starnge sounding names remind me of my dad.
now I'll have to do something different
nice evocative words remind me of coal fires , hot dripping toast and winters evenings.
take care d
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poemsgalore at 18:43 on 09 June 2003
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I take your point Blue, but the whole idea of mentioning granny was to evoke images of the past (some of the areas have changed their names now anyway) but maybe I could look at the possibility of revising it. Well David, we do seem to be on the same wavelength don't we :-) sorry if I pinched your idea.
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bluesky3d at 19:09 on 09 June 2003
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yes .. sorry I did get the message too.. its completely up you .. wouldn't suggests you alter a single word, as it conveys the memory to you..and obviously to David too so that is the most important thing .. and if 'moderate visibilty' is what she really said, then great :o)
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LONGJON at 02:37 on 10 June 2003
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Wonderful piece, you leave Granny right where she is, a very clever departure and arrival point for the journey around the forecast areas. I live in New Zealand and have since 1965. Reading your poem brought back plangent memories of listening as a child to a very large Marconi radio with one of those wavering green tuning lights on the front,in my Grandparents house in South East London, toast done on a toasting fork over the fire. In New Zealand the forecast would be "Cape Brett to Cape Colville and the Hauraki Gulf....."
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bluesky3d at 13:55 on 10 June 2003
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yes old radio sets! had one as a boy with about 30 buttons along the front that lit up with a wonderful golden glow and mellow bass sound.. it used to heat up the whole room .. used to listen to listen with mother every day at 2.00pm !
As I said, i enjoyed the poem.. and am happy to see am proved completely wrong, by David and John's comments
As you say Kathleen .. poems are personal as are our reactions
andrew
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poemsgalore at 18:35 on 10 June 2003
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old radios, don't start me on that one, whoops, think I feel another poem coming on :-)
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didau at 09:32 on 12 June 2003
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Very nice, I like the subtlety of the rhymes. Line four seems to have one syllable too many for some indefinable reason - would you consider 'tuning in to BBC' or 'tuning in the BBC'? These feel more aesthetically pleasing.
Overall this poem had a lovely, cosy feel but I would recommend caution as the shipping forcast is such a well mined source, CF 'Prayer' by Carol Ann Duffy.
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fevvers at 17:22 on 13 June 2003
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I thought of the Duffy when I read it, but I think this is a very different poem, less dark than the Duffy. I enjoyed it, there were times when your rhythm doesn't scan and the reader needs to make allowances to make it scan but a bit of tweeking would sort that out. I liked it. (I too listen to longwave on a '58 Roberts - it's amazing how evocative and nostalgic radio is and how safe it seems almost as if it's a symbol for safety).
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bluesky3d at 18:01 on 13 June 2003
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the Duffy poem ends with...
'Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.'
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roger at 15:57 on 25 August 2003
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Hi PG, just caught this in the random selection section; hadn't seen it before. I think it's really clever and well put together. It's funny, but we do tend to lend an ear to the shipping forecast, even though we've (well me anyway) got no idea what they're talking about. I don't know if I was supposed to, but I found myself smiling at a picture of Grandma nodding sagely as she said, 'moderate visability', and I hoped that, like me, she had no idea what it all meant. Lovely.
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poemsgalore at 18:26 on 25 August 2003
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It was originally going to be calle "Margaret Visibility" because when I was a child, I was convinced that was what the announcer was saying - maybe he was, and that's why we don't understand a word of it :-)
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