Flag by John Agard

John Agard-He grew up in the Caribbean and from a young age he was told to be British even though he didn't grow up in Britain.

Flag explores how national symbols bind nations together – and in doing so also fore people apart. For Agard this power is a dangerous illusion. Flags do not represent anything real at all. Nations are merely "imagined communities".

Form-Flag is written in a tight, regular form. It has five stanzas, each with three lines. The middle line of each stanza is shorter than the other two. The form mimics the shape of an old medieval flag. The three lines are like the three stripes of many national flags today.The first and third lines of the first three stanzas rhyme. This suggests a bond between the two voices in the poem. This structure then breaks in the third stanza, where "field" and "bleed" don't rhyme. It is gone by the final stanza which ends on a rhyming couplet. This shows how the 'argument' of the poem has been developing and building towards a conclusion and the characters are going in different directions.

There is one word in each stanza that shows the progression of the flag throughout the poem as it gets higher and higher. These words are "fluttering", "unfurling", "rising", and "flying".

New Page