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John Agard dictates excerpts of his poem ‘Flag’ and the ‘journey of questions’ the poem invokes. He discusses the symbolism of flags, from a simple piece of cloth to imperialism and asks if humanity waves a flag or if we are controlled by our own ideology. Inspiration for poetry writing and a lack of rules is also considered.

Teaching English Literature?

This film can be used as an introduction to the central themes of the poem. Agard asks: "Is humanity waving the flag, or is the flag waving humanity?" Students are asked to note down the different images used in the montages in the clip and discuss these in relation to his premise. Which images and ideas in the film could be described as the flag controlling peoples' ideas or people's own ideas controlling the flag? Is there any overlap between these two ideas?

This film will be relevant for teaching English Literature at KS3, KS4 and GCSE in England and Wales. This topic appears in OCR, Edexcel, AQA, WJEC.