Poets Imtiaz Dharker and Ian McMillan are among celebrities that will read special versions of radio’s The Shipping Forecast to mark the centenary of the forecast on New Year’s Day.

The Shipping Forecast has been described as a daily prose poem with its repeated strange phrases such as “falling more slowly” to describe pressure, or “backing south-westerly” to describe wind.

You can hear the King, then Prince Charles, reading Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘The Shipping Forecast’ on National Poetry Day in 2016 here. Carol Ann Duffy’s sonnet ‘Prayer’ refers to the forecast in its final line.

The Radio 4 controller and director of speech, Mohit Bakaya, said: “The Shipping Forecast is one of our national treasures. So I’m delighted that we are cracking a bottle against the hull to launch 100 years of the Shipping Forecast on the BBC with a special schedule of programming on New Year’s Day.

“As well as providing crucial information for seafarers over the years, the Shipping Forecast is also a cherished ritual that distils the essence of Radio 4 for so many of our listeners. It is also a moment for those great, unsung heroes and heroines of the Radio 4 schedule – the continuity announcers – to shine.

“On January 1, we will celebrate our ‘national poem’ with a dedicated day of fascinating programmes for listeners from Bailey to Viking, Biscay to South Utsire and everywhere in between.”

The Shipping Forecast is produced by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. This year marked its centenary, after first being heard on 1 January 1924 as a weather bulletin called Weather Shipping. It moved a year later to the BBC.

 The Shipping Forecast Day airs throughout New Year’s Day on BBC Radio 4.

PHOTOGRAPH: NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY