Here’s the text for Fail To Succeed – Dan’s entry for Premier League Primary Stars Writing Stars Competition, in case any schools want to use it!
The competition, open to 5-11 year olds, will be judged by a star-studded panel, namely children’s author and ex-Chelsea legend Frank Lampard, Everton winger and lyricist Yannick Bolasie, Lauren Child, the author-illustrator of the Charlie and Lola series and Waterstones Children’s Laureate and Young People’s Laureate for London, Caleb Femi.
The children have been tasked to write about the theme of resilience, and what it means to them, marked alongside criteria including tone, creativity and originality.
Here is Dan’s poem!
A missed shot, that goes just past the post.
That dropped catch when truly you needed it most.
So, what about the next match? There will, for sure, be another
Will we still turn to the past? Or can we yet recover?
When the next whistle blows, are you the one who can fight again?
Or is that enough? Is, for you. the beginning already the end?
To fail is to finish
To fail is to fall
Rejection the dagger, stabbing you with the thought you’re nothing at all
But what if there was another way?
A thought that keeps recurring
Failure is but a step on the journey. We can keep returning.
But that would change the frame, change the name and it would be pretty cool
It would mean we could fail as many times as we liked
Getting up after each and every fall
You knock us down, we stand up tall
We know the secret, Our eye’s on the ball
We know it’s ok to fail and you can write this in a letter
Each time we fail, we’ll just fail a little bit better
So start the match, blow that whistle, we’ll still be there to answer your call
And we know that, in the end, the final time we fail, we won’t be failing at all.