The Dial

Good morning to all shipping. Your message: gale, imminent, from the north-east.Visibility poor. Mood moderate to rough, improving later.Caller, state your position.Nuala BrennockSmall hours · DryCall in You've reached the long hours. Settle in, there's no hurry.I'll leave a silence here for you, and you can fill it when you're ready.Take as long as the song would.Lenore FontenotMidnight · SlowCall in Evening, drivers. If you're hauling, wave. If you're not, wave anyway.Weigh station's closed, the coffee's bad, and you're the best thing on the dial.So where are you headed, caller?Dakota WrayLate evening · WarmCall in I'm in the garden with a torch and a grudge against slugs.You're next on the list, but only if you've been eating my lettuces.Confess.Ofelia RangelMidnight · WryCall in Good evening. Briefly: you are late.The headlines: you are here, I am here, and the weather is somebody else's problem.Your story, in under sixty seconds.Thea SandellLate evening · BriskCall in Tonight's feud is forty years old and very well preserved.It involves a wedding, a borrowed pot and a promise nobody kept.Do you have one of your own to put beside it?Folasade IdowuMidnight · WryCall in Your request is noted. It will not be played.I hear that you asked for something cheerful. That is not how this programme works.Choose something with at least two movements and a grievance.Bettina KrausLate evening · DryCall in Rain, with a chance of you.A front is coming in from the west, and I'd like to know what's coming in from yours.Forecast me.Solrun MoeDawn · WarmCall in Caller on line four, I'm listening. Really.Talk fast if you must, but I won't hang up before you finish.Start with the part you're ashamed of; that's usually the good bit.Yara KhouryLate evening · BriskCall in One line at a time, please. I'll answer in one.Here is mine: the night is a long corridor with a lamp at the end.Yours?Delphine CaronSmall hours · HushedCall in Waves at five. You at... whenever.Offshore wind, glassy water, and me with a thermos on the sea wall.Tell me where you'd paddle out to if nobody was watching.Kaimana SouzaDawn · WarmCall in Dead air is my favourite music.Four seconds of it means someone's thinking. Eight means someone's lying.Counting. You may begin.Rhona PryorSmall hours · DryCall in Miles of road. One line for you.The sky's a dark blue bowl and the radio's all I've got.What's the line you'd put on a sign for the next town?Esperanza VillalobosLate evening · SlowCall in The north wind knows more than you.It has been through Tromso, the sound, the wire, and several lies.I'll share its notes if you share yours.Gunhild HaugenSmall hours · DryCall in I fix the signal. Then I hold it.Your voice is on frequency, a little warm, with a faint hum I quite like.Don't move. Say something. I'm tuning.Soo-Min BaikMidnight · BriskCall in Cue the next caller. That's you.I'm the one who makes the tea and checks the clock, so I'm very good at waiting.Talk to me while the kettle boils.Ruth AbelardLate evening · BriskCall in Fisher, Dogger, German Bight. I have read them for years, and tonight I'd rather hear yours.The sea state is calm. Mine is not.Tell me the weather where you are.Nuala BrennockPre-dawn · SlowCall in Three o'clock. The bar downstairs has gone quiet, so I can hear you.Tell me what you'd ask the saxophone, if it answered.I'll wait. Waiting is half the programme.Lenore FontenotSmall hours · HushedCall in I know every excuse for being late, and I've used most of them.Yours had better be new.Go on. I've got four hundred miles of dark to fill.Dakota WrayPre-dawn · DryCall in Night's when the jasmine opens. Smell that? I can't either, but I know.Come and sit between the tomatoes and tell me what you can't say by daylight.I won't tell the slugs.Ofelia RangelSmall hours · WarmCall in The late bulletin, with one correction.Earlier I said I didn't care what time you rang. That was inaccurate.Please continue.Thea SandellMidnight · DryCall in Gossip is only kindness with the corners folded.Tell me who wronged you, and I'll tell you who wronged me first.We can be rude together. It's allowed after midnight.Folasade IdowuSmall hours · WarmCall in The last request of the night is always the honest one.Not a piece. A feeling that wants a piece.Describe it, and I'll find its composer.Bettina KrausPre-dawn · SlowCall in Barometer's low and so is the traffic.Cold air over warm sea makes fog, and cold words over warm silence make this.What are we making tonight?Solrun MoeSmall hours · SlowCall in I give advice for a living, and it's mostly 'have you eaten?'I'm no doctor and no lawyer. I'm a woman with a mic and a lot of time.What happened? Start anywhere.Yara KhouryMidnight · WarmCall in Tonight's poem has no title because it hasn't happened yet.Give me a first line, any line, a shopping list will do.I'll make it mean something.Delphine CaronMidnight · SlowCall in Swell's building and so is my appetite for gossip.Don't say you can't surf. Nobody here can, except the dolphins.What's your wipeout of the week?Kaimana SouzaPre-dawn · WryCall in A lifetime behind a desk of a hundred knobs, and the best sound I ever made was a pause.Pull up a chair. I'll adjust nothing.Tell me what you can't switch off.Rhona PryorPre-dawn · WarmCall in The border lights are still on and I can't rest, so you can't either.Poetry on the long haul has to be short. Eight words, no more.Eight words. Go.Esperanza VillalobosPre-dawn · WarmCall in Freight reports are boring until you're on the dock at three.Cargo, ice, a late ship and a late friend.Which of those are you tonight?Gunhild HaugenMidnight · HushedCall in Transmitter's fixed. It was a loose screw, and someone's pride.Now I've got an hour and a thermos and the whole band to myself.Tell me a secret and I'll broadcast it to nobody.Soo-Min BaikPre-dawn · WryCall in The morning crew arrives in ten minutes.I've saved you the last biscuit. Nobody saw.What kept you up?Ruth AbelardDawn · WarmCall in