High Noon: Jane Ibur

Jane Ibur is a poet, creative writer, and teacher who “teaches people no one else teaches.” She has brought the joys of literature to homeless shelters, prisons, museums, arts centers. Her students range from gifted children to incarcerated adults, military veterans and seniors dealing with dementia. Among her educational activities, Ibur has taught and led workshops for other writing teachers through Literacy Investment for Tomorrow (LIFT), a public-private literacy resource organization, and through the RAC-funded Community Arts Training (CAT) Institute, which trains artists and social workers to form nontraditional partnerships to “put art in other places” — places such as public housing, parks, neighborhood centers and jails, where art can make a changing social impact. As she told St. Louis Public Radio, Ibur sees the post as a poetry ambassador role that will open doors for new and overlooked populations. That’s a mission Ibur knows well, one she has been fulfilling for decades.