Jane Ellen Ibur (born 1950) is an American poet and arts educator living in St. Louis, Missouri, United States.
Although she pursued a course of independent study in creative writing during college, she regards herself as virtually self-taught in the forms of poetry, knowledge that she acquired through reading and practice.
She is a pioneer in creative education with prisoners and, for more than 30 years, has been teaching adult males on the maximum security floor of the St. Louis County Jail.
For ten years she taught writing to men who were homeless, creating a performance piece entitled Footsteps from the Margins, and she worked with older women who were being served by a neighborhood settlement house.
Her work as a teacher of poetry has been funded by many mental health grants for organizations serving homeless, pregnant teens; mentally ill adults; women recovering from domestic violence; and veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
Through the CAT Institute she has, since 1997, prepared more than three hundred artists of all disciplines and community activists to collaborate in developing arts programs aimed at effecting social change, primarily in under-resourced community settings such as neighborhood organizations, social service agencies, development initiatives, and education programs.
She has continued her work with prisoners and with veterans, and she has conducted a private writing workshop for adults for the past 20 years.