Today’s poem has been chosen and introduced by Fiona Corrigan, Assistant Head of Upper School & Head of Year 10

Today’s Poem of the Day is about self-belief and motivation. It’s ‘short and sweet’ with a delightful rhythm; why not read it aloud, try to memorise it and use it as a little mantra of positive thinking?

I’m currently reading a book called ‘Great Expeditions: 50 Journeys That Changed Our World’. It’s a fairly self-explanatory title, taking the reader through the adventures of people whose travels have developed our understanding of the globe in some way.

Many of those featured are not from a ‘conventional’ background and faced low expectations from others in the course of their achievements. You might be familiar with the explorer Captain James Cook, but it’s not always known that he lacked the educational opportunities of his contemporaries. As one of eight children born to a farm labourer in the 1720s, he only received schooling when his father changed jobs and the new employer decided to pay for James to be educated.

I’m fond of a quotation attributed to Cook, which I’d like to share with you because it relates to the central idea of today’s poem: ignoring the constraints placed upon you by others and doing what you believe you can.

“Do just once what others say you can’t do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again.”

I like this for its evident hopefulness but also for its simplicity, regardless of whether Cook ever actually said it. Sometimes, the idea of resilience, of perseverance, of going that one step further to achieve something when you’ve been told you can’t… well, it can feel exhausting. At the moment, your energy levels might be low and you might be lacking in motivation; you might not feel up to countering someone’s expectation of you.

But if you do, with small steps and with pride, keeping your eyes on the horizon and nurturing your inner sense of who you are and what you can do, you might end up feeling like the speaker in today’s poem: I May, I Might, I Must by Marianne Moore. (A ‘fen’ is a low-lying area of land, covered at least partly with water.)

I May, I Might, I Must
by Marianne Moore

If you will tell me why the fen
appears impassable, I then
will tell you why I think that I
can get across it if I try