Composition
Outer composition
The poem “Remember the Ship” by John Agard has an irregular outer composition. The poem has 48 lines in total, which are structured into 18 stanzas of varying lengths. Most stanzas contain three lines, which is the longest length of a stanza in the poem. The shortest stanza is the final one, which contains only one line: “to begin” (l. 48).
The poem does not follow a set rhyming scheme. Sometimes two consecutive lines will rhyme, such as in the second and third stanzas:
I say remember
the ship
in citizenship
for language
is the baggage (ll. 3-7)
In the example above, the lines follow a coupled rhyme scheme of AABB. The same rhyme scheme can be found in the lines:
I’m here to navigate -
not flagellate (ll. 19-20)
Sometimes, the final word of a stanza will rhyme wit...