A love for poetry: Jo Van Arkel’s journey of writing poetry and fiction
Campus, Feature November 19, 2025, Comments OffFor Drury University professor Jo Van Arkel, poetry has always been her calling. Her stories and poems have appeared in publications such as the Northwest Review and The Literary Review. During her writing career, she has also been the recipient of the Missouri Writers Biennial Award. Her passion for writing and poetry began at a very young age when she fell in love with literature and words. The passion for writing and poetry she had ran deep. It became more of a habit for her in early high school and continued through into her undergraduate studies. During her time as an undergrad at Texas Christian University (TCU), she remembers taking a class with a professor named Betsy Colquitt.
“I was very intimidated by her. She was a larger-than-life figure to me. I can’t remember a single particular lesson that she taught me, but [she] obviously had a lifelong impact on me,” Van Arkel said.
Colquitt helped fuel Van Arkels’s passion for writing, and Arkel would end up graduating with both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from TCU. She started as a fiction writer and would get her M.F.A degree in creative writing from the University of Oregon in 1982. Then, in 1984, she came to Drury, where she is currently a professor teaching courses in creative writing, including poetry.
For her, some of her work has stemmed from observation journals. Van Arkel describes this as a “practice” of writing down your observations that come from all sorts of things like nature, conversations with people, or even your own dreams. This practice has inspired some of Van Arkel’s short stories and poetry over the years, which can be found in her most recent book release, Paper and Ink, Stories and Poems. It consists of monograph sets, which focus intensely on a single subject. These stories and poems are a collection of her work spanning back 35 years. Releasing the book has brought Van Arkel a sense of peace.
“When I organized them by theme, I realized they had become timeless. I was thinking about these things 30 years ago, and in a way I’m still thinking about these things now, but now comes out in this way,” Van Arkel said.
Since becoming a professor, Van Arkel has continued to drive her interest in poetry. Teaching makes Van Arkel constantly think about her poetry and has been inspired by students’ creativity. Being a professor has continued to teach Van Arkel about what younger writers are currently writing and speaking on.
Her passion with poetry and her continuous interest in wanting to know her students has inspired many people, including her own students. Jessalyn Gann is one of her current students who feels inspired by Van Arkel’s passion for poetry and writing.
“I am always amazed at the intentionality, skill, and mastery that go into her works,” Gann said. Another one of her current students, Grace Ropka, said, “Van Arkel’s classes make it clear that she is passionate about poetry and writing as a whole.”
Van Arkel’s passion for poetry and writing is clearly reflected in every class she teaches. Van Arkel said that the most rewarding part of being a professor was getting to know her students and seeing them grow not only during their time at Drury, but after they graduate.
“You get to see the long arc of where [students] get to go and what they do, and it’s just incredible to see,” Van Arkel pointed out.
Van Arkel’s passion for writing continues without slowing down. She is currently working on her next release, which will be a set of chapbooks focusing on folk tales and fairy tales, but all in an Ozark Mountains context. The set of chapbooks will be called Ozark Stories and Wonder Tales. Van Arkel has had a blast writing the set of chapbooks. She has done extensive research regarding the history of the Ozarks, pulling largely from Vance Randolph.
“Randolph was a scholar who went around and realized that the culture was changing, and modernity was going to transform Arkansas and Ozark culture,” Van Arkel said.
Randolph has inspired Van Arkel’s current chapbook pieces. Van Arkel is pulling from what Randolph had documented on stories and folk tales around the Ozarks before modernism completely changed the area. She is very excited to share her work soon, but is still in the process of completing the chapbook. Her other recent release, Paper and Ink, Stories and Poems, was soft-released earlier this year, but will soon be published on a larger scale this upcoming spring.
Van Arkel’s continued passion for fiction and poetry is both reflected in her work and her classes. She will continue to reflect and write on what inspires her, and she hopes to continue to share her passion of writing and poetry with both students and even strangers.
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