Poet Craig Arnold Goes Missing on Writing Trip

An award-winning poet and assistant professor at the University of Wyoming disappeared after setting out to explore a volcano on the Japanese island of Kuchinoerabu-jima. Japanese rescue teams have searched the dense jungle terrain for Craig Arnold, who has not been seen since Sunday, for three days without success. Typically these searches have a three-day limit.

The poetry community is rallying to extend the search and deploy more resources to the area. The Denver Post reports the Japanese government has agreed to deploy an additional 55 rescuers and extend the search another three days.

Arnold is the author of two books of poetry and a Fulbright Scholar. His first, ‘Shells,’ was selected by W.S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Young Poets in 1999. Arnold was traveling through Japan working on a series of lyric essays about the region’s volcanoes. He had been chronicling his trip on his blog, Volcano Pilgrim: Five Months in Japan as a Wandering Poet.