The Poetry Center

The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University owes its existence to an act of generosity from the poet W. H. Auden. In 1954, Auden delivered a lecture on the newly opened campus and returned half of his two hundred dollar honorarium to help establish the program. English professor Ruth Witt-Diamant used those funds to launch a public reading series that became one of the first of its kind in the United States. This event transformed the university into a gathering place for the burgeoning San Francisco Poetry Renaissance, drawing legendary voices like Langston Hughes, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams to the campus.