Commanding attention with small spear (8)
I believe the answer is:
strident
'commanding attention' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'with small spear' is the wordplay.
'with' says to put letters next to each other.
'small' becomes 's' (abbreviation - e.g. clothes size).
'spear' becomes 'trident' (trident is a kind of spear).
's'+'trident' is 'STRIDENT'.
(Other definitions for strident that I've seen before include "With a loud, harsh voice" , "Clamorous" , "making a lot of noise" , "Loudly assertive" , "harsh sound" .)