Seriously...

BBC coverage of Hull City of Culture will be extensive across 2017. At its very start, the award-winning poet Sean O'Brien reflects upon why his native city, its waterscape and landscape, have inspired poets past and present. The programme features a specially commissioned new poem from Sean - a three-part memory-piece, which is also a love-song for Hull, its surroundings and their metaphorical resonance: ........The great void Where the land loses track of itself, And the water comes sidling past at the roadsideAwaiting the signal to flood, is a kind of belief Where there is no belief, is the great consolation Of knowing that nothing will follow but weather and tides,Yet also that when the world ends There must be a Humber pilot keeping watch As the great ships are passing silently awayThrough the estuary's mouth and the saw-toothed marriage Of river and sea, and out past the fort at Bull Island And over the edge, and away............. Sean also celebrates the work of poets who have made the city their home