Jane Ellen Ibur

JANE ELLEN IBUR

ST. LOUIS POET LAUREATE

Jane Ellen Ibur, Poet Laureate of St. Louis, is an established arts educator who has received a Visionary Award for Outstanding Arts Educator; recognized as a Warrior Poet from Word in Motion; is the recipient of two awards from the Missouri Scholar’s Academy, and A World of Difference Award from the Anti-Defamation League.  She was honored with an Author Recognition Award by the Missouri Center for the Book.  Her poetry, published in literary journals and anthologies since 1972, has garnered numerous additional awards.  She received The Loretto Award for Service to Humanity and Social Justice from her alma mater, Webster University, and was awarded the 2019 Outstanding Alumna Award from that same University.  She was also chosen to speak at Webster’s 100th graduating class for their School of Arts & Sciences program.

For 40 years, Jane Ellen has taught poetry in nontraditional settings to an age range from kindergarten to 93 years old, from gifted students to Alzheimer’s patients.  For 29 years she taught a writing class on the maximum security floor of the St. Louis county jail with men.  For a decade, she taught homeless men at St. Peter and Paul’s “CollabARTive” program where she created a performance piece, Footsteps from the Margins, adapted from and inspired by the men’s writing. For 20 years, Ibur taught workshops with middle and high school students.

Jane Ellen is the founding teaching artist for the Community Arts Training (CAT) institute whose mission is to join artists and community activists to empower communities.  CAT believes art is a powerful agent for social change and CAT is the oldest institute of this kind in the country.

For 19 years, she co-produced/co-hosted Literature for the Halibut on St. Louis community radio.  Jane Ellen is the literary editor of Blindness Isn’t Black, an anthology by Missouri writers and artists with disabilities, published by VSA of Missouri. 

Jane Ellen Ibur is the author of both wings flappin’, still not flyin’  and The Little Mrs./Misses. She is currently working on two new volumes of poems, as yet untitled. One is a collaborative effort with a former student who is currently incarcerated. The other is based on her recent struggles overcoming cancer.  

Please visit Jane Ellen Ibur on Wikipedia for more information.

Partial quotes from critics on both wings flappin’ and The Little Mrs./Misses are as follows:

On both wings flappin’, still not flyin’:

“…in this evocative narrative of kinship blooming over the borders of a divided city, Ibur performs painful, beautiful, necessary work.” -  Jabari Asim, Author, A Taste of Honey

Of The Little Mrs./Misses:

“Welcome to Jane Ibur’s world of women reclaimed…with refreshing panache and aplomb this poet suggests that their lives are no small things.” – David Clewall, Poet Laureate of Missouri (2010-2012)