About Nairn
Nairn Kennedy is a Leeds-based poet whose work has appeared in Orbis, Ink Sweat & Tears, The London Magazine, Stand, The North, Spelt, 14 Magazine and Under the Radar. He’s won second prize in the Ilkley Literature Festival Competition, been longlisted in the National Poetry Competition, and highly commended in the Bridport, amongst others.
When he’s not writing poetry, he likes to read, develop software and drink more tea than is good for him.
Ursus Maritimus
Strangely, stealth’s my thing. No trees to lurk behind out there. I’m stark and sun-bright on the brilliant snow, a white ball on the billiard-table ice, where I can sniff a seal a mile away, tiptoe like a gently drifting heap of flour, a bear who isn’t there. I finish in a sudden rush at twenty miles per hour, a hundred stone of flying fur. I find that’s plenty. I can be delicate and patient, too, honing skills like Georgian ladies at their needlework; I lie by the smell of a seal near an ice-hole; wait till it surfaces, make short work of its head, JCB it with a paw, wipe my bloodied muzzle, lurk again. I can take on any creature, all the white-rimmed world, except this stealthy shrinking of the ice, this sudden spectre of a thaw.