ABSTRACT
Poets have been powerful creators of languages throughout human civilization: invested with the responsibility for preserving and transmitting values, beliefs, social codes, histories and the widest possible range of human experiences. Through a command of rhythms, rhetorical patterns and sound schemes, poets persuade. They harness the most powerful tools in any language and in any culture for forging and changing attitudes. It is especially interesting to explore how poets have shaped the shark and its reception through the centuries. This chapter explores ‘the shark’ in poetry from the sixteenth through to the twenty-first centuries. While there are yet many more ways in which sharks could be represented poetically, perhaps the more recent decline in interest by poets is rather a manifestation of a more sensitive, or environmentally friendly, approach to these creatures. Poets wield great power to change minds, and their contributions to a re-presentation of the shark in positive ways are to be welcomed.
