1. Flag
Notes for you to use to annotate with

2. Flag, by John Agard
What's that fluttering in the breeze?
It's just a piece of cloth
that brings a nation to its knees.
What's that unfurling from a pole?
It's just a piece of cloth
That makes the guts of men grow bold.
What's that rising over the tent?
It's just a piece of cloth
that dares the coward to relent.
Q & A structure
present participles
active
gentle sounds
Harder alliterative sounds
Dismissive tone
aba rhyme scheme
Dulling, flattening sound, oft repeated
Repetitious, simple
structure. Adult
talking to child?The flag is the subject of action in each verse –
that is ‘rising’, that ‘dares’, for instance

3. What's that flying across a field?
It's just a piece of cloth
that will outlive the blood you bleed.
How can I possess such a cloth?
Just ask for a flag my friend,
Then blind your conscience to the end.
Rhyming has stopped
Violent alliteration
Nature of relationship between
voices exposed – ironic in tone, or
genuine?
Ends with couplet -
finality
Direct address – is this
rude in tone, or
pleading?

4. What is our question? What is X?
• Compare the ways the poets explore ideas
about X in ‘Flag’ and in one other poem from
‘Conflict’. Which in this case will be ‘The Right
Word’
• X= the themes and ideas of the poem

5. Themes
• The emptiness of flag-worship
• The dangers of patriotism
• The perils of ‘hiding behind the flag’, of using concepts
of national identity to justify violence and ‘boldness’
• The notion that a flag is a powerful symbol, an idea of
nationhood behind which people can unite
• Inclusion also means exclusion.
• The last verse suggests that flags are easy to acquire
(‘just ask’) but harder to rid yourself of.

6. Form and structure
• Five stanzas
– ABA rhyme scheme for first three verses.
– Fourth verse does not rhyme.
– Fifth verse ends with rhyming couplet.
– First line always a simple question.
– Lines two and three answer it.
– Call-and-response/antiphonal in nature.
– Child being answered by adult? Voices separate in view by the end of
poem?
• Identical/repetitious structure in each stanza
– ‘What’s that…?’/’It’s just…’
– Line 2 is identical in verses 1-4.
– Until the last stanza, which varies structure of line 2/3 from declarative
to sequential statement (‘Just…then…’) – sounds conclusive.

7. Language
• Simple, for the most part.
• Repetitious/short words in lines 1, 2.
• The present participle that names the flag’s movement in line one is
gentle in sound; there is contrastive alliteration after this in each verse.
• Each stanza names a different element of a military encampment: breeze,
pole, tent, field – as if the first voice is surveying it.
• Line 2, beginning ‘just’, is dismissive, qualifying in tone.
• The word ‘cloth’ is heavy, deadening in tone, and is repeated once in each
verse and twice in the last verse. This repetition empties out its meaning,
undermines its significance.
• Line 3 in each stanza introduce a more abstract idea: nations, guts,
cowards, blood, conscience.
• Lines 3 in each stanza can also be seen as becoming more particular:
nations, men, cowards – then, in the last two verses ‘you’ and ‘your’.

8. Biography of poet
• John Agard was born in Guyana in 1949.
• He moved to Britain in 1977. He lives in Sussex now.
• He has published many books of poetry on many themes.
• A number of his poems are about identity.
• John Agard performing this poem:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/clips/zn4hfg8
• You’ll note that he uses what some would call a slightly
exaggerated accent, to stress the part of the world he hails
from.
• However, ‘Flag’ doesn’t use dialect (the language and
inflections of a particular region), unlike some of his other
poems.