Ruth Diamant: Professor of English and founder of the San Francisco Poetry Center

S. Ruth Witt-Diamant (1930) Professor of English and founder of the San Francisco Poetry Center. BA (1925) and MA (1927) University of California, Berkeley; advanced study at Syracuse University, University of Southern California, and University of California, Berkeley. In 1954 poet W. H. Auden, gave Witt-Diamant $100 (half of his honorarium to speak at San Francisco State’s Lake Merced campus dedication, to open a poetry center. In addition the Rockefeller Foundation awarded the Poetry Center a three-year $11,500 grant in 1955 to stimulate college and community interest in poetry, specifically to hire an assistant director or poet-in-residence. The Poetry Center became one of the first centers of its kind in the United States. The Center originally conducted bi-monthly meetings at the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Association where young poets were invited to do readings before becoming part of the campus in the late-1950s. The Poetry Center fostered the Beat generation of poets who haled from New York to San Francisco with its cheaper rents. Poets including Allan Ginsberg, Brother Antonius, Michael McClure, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti emerged in San Francisco and did readings at the Poetry Center. Retired in 1962. Died on September 5, 1987.